




<J> (\v 



V ^ 




^ ^ I ^''■'0 •^ 0 a ) i '*' i '\ O ^, 

.# .'"r 

^ a^/{l/7P:2^ ^ A 

^ : 

^oo 



.^X> o 

^ o 



^ 8 I A’^ 


. ^^^ -i' 

V '' ^ 'V ^ 




0 M 0 

,0^ s}. ^ ^ 0 

^ / "" 


c 


<S^' 



. ' ^ v> 

O '^y <■=> 

^ c “ 

i> _ r^CN.«. ^ 




/7:.\ 




o 0 ^ 


/- \Z/ 

'/j\ 1 T^y '».,• 

o /- 

i/^ ^ 

\ 

’^9 1 

'- \ 


V 

* 




\'’ . ^ ^ / • 
V v'w>«, 


.0' ^ 


V 1 B 


Cl 


•^oo^ 





co '^ <•■« V ' 

' V »' ; 




.0 



^0" 






It 


A 


'Jv 








// > 




. 0 ^. 0 ^ ,(P < 

o'^ ^ ^ >r 


•\'^' ''Tf. » 

.A ,0'^ < 'o.K^ A 

co-’ .A^b./‘“ ,-p- ,/ 


S.V 





o -v «. 

^ 0 N c ^ 



V ^a* ct 



^ ^ A ’ O 








av 


0 ^ V 







"Kr " <y Cp ^O 

^^onO ^ 









«> 
o 

. o^ .0 M 0 ^ A^ 

A^ _ 



x0°^. 



9 1 

V V 

<5: 

o 

^ ^ "" " V' c » r 

^ o o .V ^/r79^ ^ 



-v 


A' •^> 








1 





V 





*^3^0 


^ .0'’ 


.A'^ 



V 


<5^, 





<X^‘ ^r. 3 

«> 


o ^ ^ 

O i' u > A * 

"c 

O ,^V 

21 


V 






0 


,-0' ^ 


,y^ V 

o o' 


1 'i . V 


A.A* 




0 


’"bo^ 







^ <» 


> 


.0 M 0 







I 6 




0 A 


o ^ 



V 


^ i-A \\ ‘ ^ 




c. /* 



.A' 



^ 'C'’ ^ c> 

/ A ' ” * " ' o’^'^s » 'jA! /V ° ” ' 

TJ' o 0 <^ a^/nyp^ ^ 


c^ 


0^0 


•n^- v^ 




^ ^0' 






'P, o 

^ ^ V 


A' 


,0 o 


.0 


^ vA^' ^0.0^ A^* 

vVs^./> ,o\. 

"o tr- A' J' 1. " 

* », <^SS\^\yVA ° </> \v o > 

" o't? ^ 'nt- ' ' - ^ . 

''..o^ . <- '••>-‘/,.«.,V‘--’' ■■“ 

H. ^rv- Z' .^1 



N c . 






iV <r 



C 


0 



^A 




l A \V ^ 

:: v' ^ 


'p. 


^ .0- 



V 

o o' 


■%- 






y <i>, *" 

-X A . 



A\->--> ,AA ^ 



h 




i»» 






.? 


i I 




is ^ 


» » V, 




Kf 








i 






ji" j[ '*^v*' *•■*’’ ■' ' jj'* ''^■^‘ ^'i 




t ’ 


IV 


^.V'l 7 


■>* 


|lN|Ji 


i */ 




*1 v-Bf r 






I 


ft 


± r > I 






m 




' :^*- 


-s 




T 


:rr ! * i 

1/ ^ i« 


7\ • 




N> J-.«i‘ 


ii 


■f' 


iS.V 




,>V-feJ' 






i» ^ -t 


ti 


■•S 


r 


> 


I 


r - I 


v' 


Vi, 




n i! 


k 


'ifi 


i( 


<■>' 




»'.M 


E 


w 




■'»* >T *i 


W lWy,V 


i' 


' i } 




'•/¥ 


mr v" 


n' 




T4 




Y.? 


n' 


I / 


*• I 


'/ . f 


%■ 




7 


.( 

.1.1 k|V ■ 


I I 


' ♦' 




- ’ 


\ ■ * i 


C/ 


U-Ji'if 

^1 ,.i I 




.. ’-^i 


'<•/ 

• »r 




■ » 


t., V 


V'. 


m’i^ • .. . 




'iv 




I'riWUi-f' « 


,v 


ill 


mm 


%,:l 


' <1* \»y 






i ■' 0, 




• I 


• t 


»4 


»* > i i i 7 






v ' kli .'»*>■ 

▼ H ^ R • . • 


r- 




-* ^ > 




•1^ 


m 


tb 


< i.iSt ■’ 




j £ 




0 . 


I 


I --W 


f. 


V 


ij’’ 


f i 


iA 


■••V 


l/ 


h % 








i 


I V-^ , 

' j< t’L /”• > ■ I 


/iV 


a. * 


'0 ’ ' 


'( '.Cr 






3.1 T.‘ 


fj 


.« ‘ * 


‘iit/ 


!- ' I 


i*'. -i'" .*k- 

. .ii 




yi' 




?*!• ';i‘ 


£** 


\f.\ 




\> 




# • 


I »■.*.,>' 







4 ’ I 


A 


!Df. 





■iftfiii 


W I 




kWI 







OPTIONS 















> 




f ’I-. 


s 






« 




r 





u. 


^ I 


r > 1 





I 



4 



I 


« 






,r 


V 


» I 
? 



s 


f 



I 






» 





f 


I 


s 








. A 


\ 


« 



1 ♦ 


c 


% 



« 

I 


f 


I 

• ■ • _ 

♦ 


- ■ 4 '’ ■ 



I 




t^i 




t 


* • • 
r 


I 






•I 


4 . 





4 


t 


r- 





0 . Benry. A characteristic 'photograph 



OPTIONS 


BY 

. O. 

Author of **The Four Million,^* ^^Tfie Voice of the 
City/’ *^The Trimmed Lamp’’ ‘^Strictly 
Business,” ^'Whirligigs” 



Gakdbn City New York 
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 
1920 



COPYRIGHT, 1909, BY 
HARPER & BROTHERS 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF 
TRANSLATION INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, 
INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN 


\ 



» f ** 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 

‘‘The Rose of Dixie” . . . r. . i. . . 3 

The Third Ingredient . . . ^ • i. . 20 

The Hiding of Black Bill . . . , . . 38 

Schools and Schools 56 

Thimble, Thimble 72 

Supply and Demand .... i. . . . 89 

Buried Treasure . . i. . . 104* 

To Him Who Waits . . . . . i. . . 119 

He Also Serves . . . 134* 

The Moment of Victory . . . i. . . . 150 

The Head-Hunter . . . . i. . 167 

No Storit ......... V . . . 185 

The Higher Pragmatism i. . . i. . . 199 

Best-Seller . . i. ;. . .. t. . . . 210 

Rus IN Urbe . . (. t. . I., i., . . 227 


A Poor Rule . > i. i.i i.; t.j ;. . 24<0 



OPTIONS 



r 

. ''v 


u 






J 


\ 









I 




( 


■ !' 



I I 


« ' 


; 



OPTIONS 


“THE ROSE OF DIXIE” 

W HEN The Rose of Dixie magazine was started by a 
stock company in Toombs City, Georgia, there was never 
but one candidate for its chief editorial position in the 
minds of its owners. Col. Aquila Telfair was the man for 
the place. By all the rights of learning, family, reputa- 
tion, and Southern traditions, he was its foreordained, 
fit, and logical editor. So, a committee of the patriotic 
Georgia citizens who had subscribed the founding fund 
of $100,000 called upon Colonel Telfair at his residence. 
Cedar Heights, fearful lest the enterprise and the South 
should suffer by his possible refusal. 

The colonel received them in his great library, where 
he spent most of his days. The library had descended to 
him from his father. It contained ten thousand volumes, 
some of which had been published as late as the year 
1861. When the deputation arrived. Colonel Telfair 
was seated at his massive white-pine centre-table, reading 
Burton’s ‘‘Anatomy of Melancholy.” He arose and 
shook hands punctiliously with each member of the com- 
3 


4 Options 

mittee. If you were familiar with The Rose of Dixie you 
will remember the colonel’s portrait, which appeared in 
it from time to time. You could not forget the long, 
carefully brushed white hair; the hooked, high-bridged 
nose, slightly twisted to the left ; the keen eyes under the 
still black eyebrows; the classic mouth beneath the 
drooping white mustache, slightly frazzled at the ends. 

The committee solicitously offered him the position of 
managing editor, humbly presenting an outline of the 
field that the publication was designed to cover and men- 
tioning a comfortable salary. The colonel’s lands were 
growing poorer each year and were much cut up by red 
gullies. Besides, the honor was not one to be refused. 

In a forty-minute speech of acceptance. Colonel Tel- 
fair gave an outline of English literature from Chaucer 
to Macaulay, re-fought the battle of Chanccllorsville, 
and said that, God helping him, he would so conduct 
The Rose of Dixie that its fragrance and beauty would 
permeate the entire world, hurling back into the teeth 
of the Northern minions their belief that no genius or 
good could exist in the brains and hearts of the people 
whose property they had destroyed and whose rights 
they had curtailed. 

Offices for the magazine were partitioned off and fur- 
nished in the second floor of the First National Bank 
building; and it was for the colonel to cause The Rose of 
Dixie to blossom and flourish or to wilt in the balmy air 
of the land of flowers. 

The staff of assistants and contributors that Editor- 


^^TTie Rose of Dixie^^ 


5 


Colonel Telfair drew about him was a peach. It was a 
whole crate of Georgia peaches. The first assistant edi- 
tor, Tolliver Lee Fairfax, had had a father killed dur- 
ing Pickett’s charge. The second assistant, Keats Un- 
thank, was the nephew of one of Morgan’s Raiders, The 
book reviewer, Jackson Rockingham, had been the young- 
est soldier in the Confederate army, having appeared on 
the field of battle with a sword in one hand and a milk- 
bottle in the other. The art editor, Roncesvalles Sykes, 
was a third cousin to a nephew of Jefferson Davis. Miss 
Lavinia Terhune, the colonel’s stenographer and type- 
writer, had an aunt who had once been kissed by Stone- 
wall Jackson. Tommy Webster, the head office boy, got 
his job by having recited Father Ryan’s poems, complete, 
at the commencement exercises of the Toombs City High 
School. The girls who wrapped and addressed the mag- 
azines were members of old Southern families in Reduced 
Circumstances. The cashier was a scrub named Haw- 
kins, from Ann Arbor, Michigan, who had recommenda- 
tions and a bond from a guarantee company filed with 
the owners. Even Georgia stock companies sometimes 
realize that it takes live ones to bury the dead. 

Well, sir, if you believe me. The Rose of Dixie blos- 
somed five times before anybody heard of it except the 
people who buy their hooks and eyes in Toombs City. 
Then Hawkins climbed off his stool and told on ’em to 
the stock company. Even in Ann Arbor he had been 
used to having his business propositions heard of at least 
as far away as Detroit. So an advertising manager was 


6 


Options 

engaged — Beauregard Fitzliugh Banks — a young man 
in a lavender necktie, whose grandfather had been the 
Exalted High Pillow-slip of the Kuklux Klan. 

In spite of which The Rose of Dixie kept coming out 
every month. Although in every issue it ran photos of 
either the Taj Mahal or the Luxembourg Gardens, or 
Carmencita or La Follette, a certain number of people 
bought it and subscribed for it. As a boom for it, 
Editor-Colonel Telfair ran three different views of An- 
drew Jackson’s old home, ^‘The Hermitage,” a full -page 
engraving of the second battle of Manassas, entitled 
‘Tee to the Rear !” and a five-thousand-word biography 
of Belle Boyd in the same number. The subscription list 
that month advanced 118. Also there were poems in the 
same issue by Leonina Vashti Haricot (pen-name), re- 
lated to the Haricots of Charleston, South Carolina, 
and BiU Thompson, nephew of one of the stockholders. 
And an article from a special society correspondent 
describing a tea-party given by the swell Boston and 
English set, where a lot of tea was spilled overboard by 
some of the guests masquerading as Indians. 

One day a person whose breath would easily cloud a 
mirror, he was so much alive, entered the office of The 
Rose of Dixie. He was a man about the size of a real- 
estate agent, with a self-tied tie and a manner that he 
must have borrowed conjointly from W. J. Bryan, Hack- 
enschmidt, and Hetty Green. He was shown into the 
editor-colonel’s pons asinorum. Colonel Telfair rose 
and began a Prince Albert bow. 


''The Rose of Diane^^ 7 

Thacker,” said the intruder, taking the editor’s 
chair — T. Thacker, of New York.” 

He dribbled hastily upon the colonel’s desk som^ 
cards, a bulk manila envelope, and a letter from the 
owners of The Rose of Dixie. This letter introduced 
Mr. Thacker, and politely requested Colonel Telfair to 
give him a conference and whatever information about 
the magazine he might desire. 

^T’ve been corresponding with the secretary of the 
magazine owners for some time,” said Thacker, briskly, 
^T’m a practical magazine man myself, and a circulation 
booster as good as any, if I do say it. I’ll guarantee an 
increase of anywhere from ten thousand to a hundred 
thousand a year for any publication that isn’t printed in 
a dead language. I’ve had my eye on The Rose of Dixie 
ever since it started. I know every end of the business 
from editing to setting up the classified ads. Now, I’ve 
come down here to put a good bunch of money in the 
magazine, if I can see my way clear. It ought to be made 
to pay. The secretary tells me it’s losing money. I don’t 
see why a magazine in the South, if it’s properly handled, 
shouldn’t get a good circulation in the North, too.” 

Colonel Telfair leaned back in his chair and polished 
his gold-rimmed glasses. 

^^Mr. Thacker,” said he, courteously but firmly, *^The 
Rose of Dixie is a publication devoted to the fostering 
and the voicing of Southern genius. Its watchword, 
which you may have seen on the cover, is ‘Of, For, and 
By the South.’ ” 


8 Options 

^‘But you wouldn’t object to a Northern circulation, 
would you?” asked Thacker. 

‘T suppose,” said the editor-colonel, ‘Hhat it is cus- 
tomary to open the circulation lists to all. I do not 
know. I have nothing to do with the business aiTairs of 
the magazine. I was called upon to assume editorial 
control of it, and I have devoted to its conduct such 
poor literary talents as I may possess and whatever 
store of erudition I may have acquired.” 

^‘Sure,” said Thacker. ‘‘But a dollar is a dollar any- 
where, North, South, or West — whether you’re buying 
codfish, goober peas, or Rocky Ford cantaloupes. Now, 
I’ve been looking over your November number. I see 
one here on your desk. You don’t mind running over it 
with me? 

“Well, your leading article is all right. A good write- 
up of the cotton-belt with plenty of photographs is a 
winner any time. New York is always interested in the 
cotton crop. And this sensational account of the Hat- 
field-McCoy, feud, by a schoolmate of a niece of the Gov- 
ernor of Kentucky, isn’t such a bad idea. It happened 
so long ago that most people have forgotten it. Now, 
here’s a poem three pages long called ‘The Tyrant’s 
Foot,’ by Lorella Lascelles. I’ve pawed around a good 
deal over manuscripts, but I never saw her name on a 
rejection slip.” 

“Miss Lascelles,” said the editor, “is one of our most 
widely recognized Southern poetesses. She is closely re- 
lated to the Alabama Lascelles family, and made with her 


''The Rose of Diocie^' 


9 


own hands the silken Confederate banner that was pre- 
sented to the governor of that state at his inauguration.” 

‘^But why,” persisted Thacker, ^^is the poem illus- 
trated with a view of the M. & O. Railroad freight depot 
at Tuscaloosa.^” 

‘‘The illustration,” said the colonel, with dignity, 
“shows a corner of the fence surrounding the old home- 
stead where Miss Lascelles was born.” 

“All right,” said Thacker. “I read the poem, but I 
couldn’t tell whether it was about the depot or the battle 
of Bull Run. Now, here’s a short story called ‘Rosie’s 
Temptation,’ by Fosdyke Piggott. It’s rotten. .What 
is a Piggott, anyway.^” 

“Mr. Piggott,” said the editor, “is a brother of the 
principal stockholder of the magazine.” 

“All’s right with the world — Piggott passes,” said 
Thacker. “Well, this article on Arctic exploration and 
the one on tarpon fishing might go. But how about this 
write-up of the Atlanta, New Orleans, Nashville, and 
Savannah breweries.^ It seems to consist mainly of 
statistics about their output and the quality of their 
beer. What’s the chip over the bug?” 

“If I understand your figurative language,” answered 
Colonel Telfair, “it is this : the article you refer to was 
handed to me by the owners of the magazine with instruc- 
tions to publish it. The literary quality of it did not 
appeal to me. But, in a measure, I feel impelled to con- 
form, in certain matters, to the wishes of the gentlemen 
who are interested in the financial side of The RoseJ* 


10 Options 

see,” said Thacker. ‘‘Next we have two pages of 
selections from ‘Lalla Rookh,’ by Thomas Moore Now, 
what Federal prison did Moore escape from, or what’s the 
name of the F.F.V. family that he carries as a handicap?” 

“Moore was an Irish poet who died in 1852,” said 
Colonel Telfair, pityingly. “He is a classic. I have 
been thinking of reprinting his translation of Anacreon 
serially in the magazine.” 

“Look out for the copyright laws,” said Thacker, flip- 
pantly. “Who’s Bessie Belleclair, who contributes the 
essay on the newly completed water-works plant in 
Milledgeville?” 

“The name, sir,” said Colonel Telfair, “is the nom de 
guerre of Miss Elvira Simpkins. I have not the honor 
of knowing the lady ; but her contribution was sent us by 
Congressman Brower, of her native state. Congressman 
Brower’s mother was related to the Polks of Tennessee.” 

“Now, see here, Colonel,” said Thacker, throwing 
down the magazine, “this won’t do. You can’t success- 
fully run a magazine for one particular section of the 
country. You’ve got to make a universal appeal. Look 
how the Northern publications have catered to the South 
and encouraged the Southern writers. And you’ve got 
to go far and wide for your contributors. You’ve got 
to buy stuff according to its quality, without any regard 
to the pedigree of the author. Now, I’ll bet a quart of 
ink that this Southern parlor organ you’ve been running 
has never played a note that originated above Mason & 
Hamlin’s line. Am I rights” 


''The Rose of Dixie'' 


11 


have carefully and conscientiously rejected all 
contributions from that section of the countr\^ — if I 
understand your figurative language aright,” replied the 
colonel. 

“All right. Now, I’ll show you something.” 

Thacker reached for his thick manila envelope and 
dumped a mass of t3^pewritten manuscript on the editor’s 
desk. 

“Here’s some truck,” said he, “that I paid cash for, 
ard brought along with me.” 

One by one he folded back the manuscripts and showed 
their first pages to the colonel. 

^‘Here are four short stories by four of the highest 
priced authors in the United States — three of ’em living 
in New York, and one commuting. There’s a special 
article on Vienna-bred society" bj" Tom Vampson. Here’s 
an Italian serial by Captain Jack — no — it’s the other 
Crawford. Here are three separate exposes of chy gov- 
ernments by Sniffings, and here’s a dandy entitled ‘What 
Women Carry in Dress-Suit Cases’ — a Chicago news- 
paper woman hired herself out for five years as a ladj^’s 
maid to get that information. And here’s a Sjmopsis of 
Preceding Chapters of Hall Caine’s new serial to appear 
next June. And here’s a couple of pounds of rers de 
societe that I got at a rate from the clever magazines. 
That’s the stuff that people cverj^where want. And now 
here’s a write-up with photographs at the ages of four, 
twelve, twenty-two, and thirty of George B. McClellan. 
It’s a prognostication. He’s bound to be elected Maj^or 


12 Options 

of New York. It’ll make a big hit all over the country. 
He ” 

‘‘I beg your pardon,” said Colonel Telfair, stiffening 
in his chair. ‘What was the name.^” 

“Oh, I see,” said Thacker, with half a grin. “Yes, 
he’s a son of the General. We’ll pass that manuscript up. 
But, if you’ll excuse me. Colonel, it’s a magazine we’re 
trying to make go off — not the first gun at Fort Sumter. 
Now, here’s a thing that’s bound to get next to you. 
It’s an original poem by James Whitcomb Riley. J. 
W. himself. You know what that means to a magazine. 
I won’t tell you w^hat I had to pay for that poem ; but 
I’ll tell you this — Riley can make more money writing 
with a fountain-pen than you or I can with one that lets 
the ink run. I’ll read you the last two stanzas : 

‘“Pa lays around V loafs all day, 

’N' reads and makes us leave him be. 

He lets me do just like I please, 

’N’ when I’m bad he laughs at me, 

*N’ when I holler loud ’n’ say 

Bad words ’n’ then begin to tease 
The cat, V pa just smiles, ma’s mad 
*N’ gives me Jesse crost her knees. 

I always w^ondered why that wuz — ; 

I guess it’s cause 
Pa never does. 

after all the lights are out 
Pm sorry ’bout it; so I creep 
Out of my trundle bed to ma’s 
’N’ say I love her a whole heap, 

’N’ kiss her, ’n’ I hug her tight 


"The Bose of Dixie” 


13 


’N’ it’s too dark to see her eyes. 

But every time I do I know 
She cries V cries ’n’ cries ’n’ cries. 

I always wondered why that wuz — 

I guess it’s cause 
Pa never does.’ 

‘^That’s the stuff,” continued Thacker. ^What do 
you think of that.'^” 

am not unfamiliar with the works of Mr. Riley,” 
said the colonel, deliberately. ‘T believe he lives in In- 
diana. For the last ten years I have been somewhat of a 
literary recluse, and am familiar with nearly all the books 
in the Cedar Heights library^. I am also of the opinion 
that a magazine should contain a certain amount of 
poetry. Many of the sweetest singers of the South have 
already contributed to the pages of The Rose of Dixie. 
I, myself, have thought of translating from the original 
for publication in its pages the works of the great 
Italian poet Tasso. Have you ever drunk from the 
fountain of this immortal poet’s lines, Mr. Thacker?” 

^‘Not even a demi-Tasso,” said Thacker. “Now, let’s 
come to the point. Colonel Telfair. I’ve already invested 
some money in this as a flyer. That bunch of manu- 
scripts cost me $4,000. My object was to try a number 
of them in the next issue — I believe you make up less 
than a month ahead — and see what effect it has on the 
circulation. I believe that by printing the best stuff 
we can get in the North, South, East, or West we can 
make the magazine go. You have there the letter from 
the owning company asking you to co-operate with me 


14 Options 

in the plan. Let’s chuck out some of this slush that 
you’ve been publishing just because the writers are re- 
lated to tlie Skoopdoodles of Skoopdoodle County. 
Are you with me?” 

^^As long as I continue to be the editor of The KosCy* 
said Colonel Telfair, with dignity, ‘‘1 shall be its editor. 
But I desire also to conform to the wishes of its owners 
if I can do so conscientiously.” 

“That’s the talk,” said Thacker, briskh\ “Now, how 
much of this stuff I’ve brought can we get into the Jan- 
uary number? We want to begin right away.” 

“There is 3 ^ct space in the January number,” said the 
editor, “for about eight thousand words, roughly esti- 
mated.” 

“Great !” said Thacker. “It isn’t much, but it’ll give 
the readers some change from goobers, governors, and 
Gettysburg. I’ll leave the selection of the stuff I 
brought to fill the space to you, as it’s all good. I’ve 
got to run back to New York, and I’ll be down again 
in a couple of weeks.” 

Colonel Telfair slowly swung his eye-glasses by their 
broad, black ribbon. 

“The space in tlie January number that I referred to,” 
said he, measuredly, “has been held open purposely, 
pending a decision that I have not yet made. A short 
time ago a contribution was submitted to The Rose of 
Dixie that is one of the most remarkable literary efforts 
that has ever come under my observation. None but a 
master mind and talent could have produced it. It 


"'The Rose of Dixie"" 15 

would about fill the space that I have reserved for its 
possible use.” 

Thacker looked anxious. 

^‘What kind of stuff is it.^” he asked. “Eight thou- 
sand words sounds suspicious. The oldest families must 
have been collaborating. Is there going to be another 
secession.^” 

“The author of the article,” continued the colonel, 
ignoring Thacker’s allusions, “is a writer of some reputa- 
tion. He has also distinguished himself in other ways. 
1 do not feel at liberty to reveal to you his name — at 
least not until I have decided whether or not to accept 
his contribution.” 

“Well,” said Thacker, nervously, “is it a continued 
story, or an account of the unveiling of the new town 
pump in Whitmire, South Carolina, or a revised list of 
General Lee’s body-servants, or what.^” 

“You are disposed to be facetious,” said Colonel Tel- 
fair, calmly. “The article is from the pen of a thinker, 
a philosopher, a lover of mankind, a student, and a 
rhetorician of high degree.” 

“It must have been written by a syndicate,” said 
Thacker. “But, honestly, Colonel, 3^ou want to go slow. 
I don’t know of any eight- thousand-word single doses 
of written matter that are read by anybod^^ these days, 
except Supreme Court briefs and reports of murder 
trials. You haven’t by any accident gotten hold of a 
copy of one of Daniel Webster’s speeches, have you?” 

Colonel Telfair swung a little in his chair and looked 


16 Options 

steadily fr-om under his bushy eyebrows at the magazine 
promoter. 

^‘Mr. Thacker,” he said, gravely, am willing to se- 
gregate the somewhat crude expression of your sense of 
humor from the solicitude that your business investments 
undoubtedly have conferred upon you. But I must ask 
you to cease your jibes and derogatory comments upon 
the South and the Southern people. They, sir, will not 
be tolerated in the office of The Rose of Dixie for one mo- 
ment. And before you proceed with more of your covert 
insinuations that I, the editor of this magazine, am not a 
competent judge of the merits of the matter submitted 
to its consideration, I beg that you will first present some 
evidence or proof that you are my superior in any way, 
shape, or form relative to the question in hand.” 

‘^Oh, come. Colonel,” said Thacker, good-naturedly. 
‘‘I didn’t do anything like that to you. It sounds like 
an indictment by the fourth assistant attorney-general. 
Let’s get back to business. What’s this 8,000 to 1 
shot about 

‘‘The article,” said Colonel Telfair, acknowledging the 
apology by a , slight bow, “covers a wide area of knowl- 
edge, It takes up theories and questions that have 
puzzled the world for centuries, and disposes of them 
logically and concisely. One by one it holds up to view 
the evils of the world, points out the way of eradicating 
them, and then conscientiously and in detail commends 
the good. There is hardly a phase of human life that 
it d€>es not discuss wisely, calmly, and equitably. The 


^'The Rose of Diane"" 


17 

great policies of governments, the duties of private citi- 
zens, the obligations of home life, law, ethics, morality 
— all these important subjects are handled with a calm 
wisdom and confidence that I must confess has captured 
my admiration.” 

‘^It must be a cracker jack,” said Thacker, impressed. 

‘‘It is a great contribution to the world’s wisdom,” 
said the colonel. “The only doubt remaining in my 
mind as to the tremendous advantage it would be to us to 
give it publication in The Rose of Dixie is that I have not 
yet sufficient information about the author to give his 
work publicity in our magazine.” 

“I thought you said he is a distinguished man,” said 
Thacker. 

“He is,” replied the colonel, “both in literary and in 
other more diversified and extraneous fields. But I am 
extremely careful about the matter that I accept for 
publication. My contributors are people of unquestion- 
able repute and connections, which fact can be verified 
at any time. As I said, I am holding this article until 
I can acquire more information about its author. I 
do not know whether I will publish it or not. If I decide 
against it, I shall be much pleased, Mr. Thacker, to 
substitute the matter that you are leaving with me in 
its place.” 

Thacker was somewhat at sea. 

“I don’t seem to gather,” said he, “much about the 
gist of this inspired piece of literature. It souikIs more 
like a dark horse than Pegasus to me.” 


18 Options 

is a human document,” said the colonel-editor, 
confidently, ‘‘from a man of great accomplishments who, 
in my opinion, has obtained a stronger grasp on the world 
and its outcomes than that of any man living to-day.” 

Thacker rose to his feet excitedly. 

“Say !” he said. “It isn’t possible that you’ve cor- 
nered John D. Rockefeller’s memoirs, is it.'^ Don’t tell 
me that all at once.” 

“No, sir,” said Colonel Telfair. “I am speaking of 
mentality and literature, not of the less worthy intri- 
cacies of trade.” 

“Well, what’s the trouble about running the article,” 
asked Thacker, a little impatiently, “if the man’s well 
known and has got the stuff?” 

Colonel Telfair sighed. 

“Mr. Thacker,” said he, “for once I have been tempted. 
Nothing has yet appeared in The Rose of Dixie that has 
not been from the pen of one of its sons or daughters. I 
know little about the author of this article except that he 
has acquired prominence in a section of the country that 
has always been inimical to my heart and mind. But I 
recognize his genius ; and, as I have told you, I have in- 
stituted an investigation of his personality. Perhaps it 
will be futile. But I shall pursue the inquiry. Until 
that is finished, I must leave open the question of filling 
the vacant space in our January number.” 

Thacker arose to leave. 

“All right, Colonel,” he said, as cordially as he could. 
“You use your own judgment. If you’ve really got a 


"'The Rose of Diocie'" 


19 


scoop or something that will make ’em sit up, run it in- 
stead of nij stuff. I’ll drop in again in about two 
weeks. Good luck!” 

Colonel Telfair and the magazine promoter shook 
hands. 

Returning a fortnight later, Thacker dropped off a 
very rocky Pullman at Toombs City. He found the 
January number of the magazine made up and the forms 
closed. 

The vacant space that had been yawning for type was 
filled by an article that was headed thus : 

• SECOND MESSAGE TO CONGRESS 

Written for 

THE ROSE OF DIXIE 

BY 

A Member of the Well-known 
BULLOCH FAMILY, OF GEORGIA 
T. Roosevelt 


7 



THE THIRD INGREDIENT 

The (so-called) Vallambrosa Apartment-House is not 
an apartment-house. It is composed of two old-fash- 
ioned, brownstone-front residences welded into one. The 
parlor floor of one side is gay with the wraps and head- 
gear of a modiste ; the other is lugubrious with the so- 
phistical promises and grisly display of a painless den- 
tist. You may have a room there for two dollars a week 
or you may have one for twenty dollars. Amon^ the 
Vallambrosa’s roomers are stenographers, musicians, 
brokers, shopgirls, space-rate writers, art students, wire- 
tappers, and other people who lean far over the banister- 
rail when the door-bell rings. 

This treatise shall have to do with but two of the Val- 
lambrosians — though meaning no disrespect to the 
others. 

At six o’clock one afternoon Hetty Pepper came back 
to her third-floor rear $3.50 room in the Vallambrosa 
with her nose and chin more sharply pointed than usual. 
To be discharged from the department store where you 
have been working four years, and with only fifteen 
cents in your purse, does have a tendency to make your 
features appear more finely chiselled. 

And now for Hetty’s thumb-nail biography while she 
climbs the two flights of stairs. 

She walked into the Biggest Store one morning four 
20 


21 


The Third Ingredient 

years before, with seventy-five other girls, applying for a 
job behind the waist department counter. The phalanx 
of wage-earners formed a bewildering scene of beauty, 
carrying a total mass of blond hair sufficient to have 
justified the horseback gallops of a hundred Lady 
Godivas. 

The capable, cool-eyed impersonal, young, bald- 
headed man, whose task it was to engage six of the con- 
testants, was aware of a feeling of suffocation as if he 
were drowning in a sea of frangipanni, while white clouds, 
hand-embroidered, floated about him. And then a sail 
hove in sight. Hetty Pepper, homely of countenance, 
with small, contemptuous, green eyes and chocolate- 
colored hair, dressed in a suit of plain burlap and a com- 
mon-sense hat, stood before him with every one of her 
twentj’^-nine years of life unmistakably in sight. 

^‘You’re on !” shouted the bald-headed young man, and 
was saved. And that is how Hetty came to be employed 
in the Biggest Store. The story of her rise to an eight- 
dollar-a-week salary is the combined stories of Hercules, 
Joan of Arc, Una, Job, and Little-Red-Riding-Hood. 
You shall not learn from me the salary that was paid her 
as a beginner. There is a sentiment growing about such 
things, and I want no millionaire store-proprietors 
climbing the fire-escape of my tenement-house to throw 
dynamite bombs into my skylight boudoir. 

The story of Hetty’s discharge from the Biggest Store 
is so nearly a repetition of her engagement as to be 
monotonous. 


22 


Options 

In each department of the store there is an omniscient, 
omnipresent, and omnivorous person carrying always a 
mileage book and a red necktie, and referred to as a 
^^buyer.” The destinies of the girls in his department 
who live on (see Bureau of Victual Statistics) — so 
much per week are in his hands. 

This particular buyer was a capable, cool-eyed, im- 
personal, young, bald-headed man. As he walked along 
the aisles of his department he seemed to be sailing on a 
sea of frangipanni, while white clouds, machine-embroid- 
ered, floated around him. Too many sweets bring sur- 
feit. He looked upon Hetty Pepper’s homely counte- 
nance, emerald eyes, and chocolate-colored hair as a 
welcome oasis of green in a desert of cloying beauty. In 
a quiet angle of a counter he pinched her arm kindly, 
three inches above the elbow. She slapped him three feet 
away with ono good blow of her muscular and not espe- 
cially lily-white right. So, now you know why Hetty 
Pepper came to leave the Biggest Store at thirty min- 
utes’ notice, with one dime and a nickel in her purse. 

This morning’s quotations list the price of rib beef at 
six cents per (butcher’s) pound. But on the day that 
Hetty was ‘^released” by the B. S. the price Tras seven 
and one half cents. That fact is what makes this stoiy 
possible. Otherwise, the extra four cents w^ould have 

But the plot of nearly all the good stories in the world 
is concerned with shorts who were unable to cover; so 
you can find no fault wdth this one. 

Hetty mounted with her rib beef to her $3.50 third- 


23 


The Third Ingredient 

floor back. One hot, savory beef-stew for supper, a 
night’s good sleep, and she vrould be fit in the morning to 
apply again for the tasks of Hercules, Joan of Arc, Una, 
Job, and Little-Red-Riding-Hood. 

In her room she got the graniteware stew-pan out of 
the 2x4}-foot china — er — I mean earthenware closet, 
and began to dig down in a rat’s-nest of paper bags for 
the potatoes and onions. She came out with her nose 
and chin just a little sharper pointed. 

There was neither a potato nor an onion. Now, what 
kind of a beef-stew can you make out of simply beef? 
You can make oyster-soup without oysters, turtle-soup 
without turtles, colFee-cake without coffee, but you can’t 
make beef-stew without potatoes and onions. 

But rib beef alone, in an emergency, can make an 
ordinary pine door look like a wrought-iron gambling- 
house portal to the wolf. With salt and pepper and a 
tablcspoonful of flour (first well stirred in a little cold 
water) ’twill serve — ’tis not so deep as a lobster a la 
Newburgh, nor so wide as a church festival doughnut; 
but ’twill serve. 

Hetty took her stew-pan to the rear of the third-floor 
hall. According to the advertisements of the Vallam- 
brosa there was running water to be found there. Be- 
tween you and me and the w'ater-meter, it only ambled or 
walked through the faucets ; but technicalities have no 
place here. There was also a sink where housekeeping 
roomers often met to dump their coffee grounds and 
glare at one another’s kimonos. 


24 Options 

At this sink Hetty found a girl with heavy, gold-brown, 
artistic hair and plaintive eyes, washing two large 
^^Irish” potatoes. Hetty knew the Vallambrosa as well 
as any one not owning ^^ouble hextra-magnifying eyes” 
could compass its mysteries. The kimonos were her en- 
cyclopaedia, her ^‘Who’s What?” her clearing-house of 
news, of goers and comers. From a rose-pink kimono 
edged with Nile green she had learned that the girl with 
the potatoes was a miniature-painter living in a kind of 
attic — or ^‘studio,” as they prefer to call it — on the 
top floor. Hetty was not certain in her mind what a 
miniature w as ; but it certainly wasn’t a house ; because 
house-painters, although they wear splashy overalls and 
poke ladders in your face on the street, are known to in- 
dulge in a riotous profusion of food at home. 

The potato girl was quite slim and small, and handled 
her potatoes as an old bachelor uncle handles a baby who 
is cutting teeth. She had a dull shoemaker’s knife in her 
right hand, and she had begun to peel one of the potatoes 
with it. 

Hetty addressed her in the punctiliously formal tone of 
one who intends to be cheerfully familiar with you in the 
second round. 

^‘Beg pardon,” she said, ^‘for butting into what’s not 
my business, but if you peel them potatoes you lose out. 
They’re new Bermudas. You want to scrape ’em. Lem- 
me show you.” 

She took a potato and the knife, and began to dem- 
onstrate. 


25 


The Third Ingredient 

‘‘Oh, thank you,” breathed the artist. “I didn’t know. 
And I did hate to see the thick peeling go ; it seemed such 
a waste. But I thought they always had to be peeled. 
When you’ve got only potatoes to eat, the peelings count, 
you know.” 

“Say, kid,” said Hetty, staying her knife, “you ain’t 
up against it, too, are you.^” 

The miniature artist smiled starvedly. 

“I suppose I am. Art — or, at least, the way I in- 
terpret it — doesn’t seem to be much in demand. I 
have only these potatoes for my dinner. But they 
aren’t so bad boiled and hot, with a little butter and 
salt.” 

“Child,” said Hetty, letting a brief smile soften her 
rigid features, “Fate has sent me and you together. I’ve 
had it handed to me in the neck, too; but I’ve got 
a chunk of meat in my room as big as a lap-dog. And 
I’ve done everything to get potatoes except pray for ’em. 
Let’s me and you bunch our commissary departments and 
make a stew of ’em. We’ll cook it in my room. If we 
only had an onion to go in it ! Say, kid, you haven’t got 
a couple of pennies that’ve slipped down into the lining 
of your last winter’s sealskin, have you? I could step 
down to the corner and get one at old Giuseppe’s stand. 
A stew without an onion is worse’n a matinee without 
candy.” 

“You may call me Cecilia,” said the artist. “No; I 
spent my last penny three days ago.” 

“Then we’ll have to cut the onion out instead of slicing 


26 


Options 

it in,” said Hetty. ^‘I’d ask the janitress for one, but I 
don’t want ’em hep just yet to the fact that I’m pounding 
the asphalt for another job. But I wish we did have an 
onion.” 

In the shop-girl’s room the two began to prepare their 
supper. Cecilia’s part was to sit on the couch helplessly 
and beg to be allowed to do something, in the voice of a 
cooing ring-dove. Hetty prepared the rib beef, putting 
it in cold salted water in the stew-pan and setting it on 
the one-burner gas-stove. 

^‘I wish we had an onion,” said Hettj^ as she scraped 
two potatoes. 

On the wall opposite the couch was pinned a flaming, 
gorgeous advertising picture of one of the new' ferry- 
boats of the P. U. F. F. Railroad that had been built to 
cut down the time between Los Angeles and New York 
City one eighth of a minute. 

Hetty, turnihg her head during her continuous mono- 
logue, saw tears running from her guest’s eyes as she 
gazed on the idealized presentment of the speeding, foam- 
girdled transport. 

‘Why, say, Cecilia, kid,” said Hett^s poising her knife, 
“is it as bad art as that ? I ain’t a critic, but I thought 
it kind of brightened up the room. Of course, a mani- 
cure-painter could tell it was a bum picture in a minute. 
I’ll take it dowm if you say so. I wish to the holy Saint 
Potluck we had an onion.” 

But the miniature miniature-painter had tumbled 
down, sobbing, with her nose Indenting the hard-woven 


27 


The Third Ingredient 

drapery of the coach. Somethhag was here deeper than 
the artistic temperament offended at crude lithography. 

Hetty knew. She had accepted her role long ago. 
How scant the words with which we try to describe a 
single quality of a human being! When we reach the 
abstract we are lost. The nearer to Nature that the 
babbling of our lips comes, the better do we understand. 
Figuratively (let us say), some people are Bosoms, some 
are Hands, some are Heads, some are Muscles, some are 
Feet, some are Backs for burdens. 

Hetty was a Shoulder. Hers was a sharp, sinewy 
shoulder ; but all her life people had laid their heads upon 
it, metaphorically or actually, and had left there all or 
half their troubles. Looking at Life anatomically, whiek 
is as good a way as any, she was preordained to be a 
Shoulder. There were few truer collar-bones anywhere 
than hers. 

Hetty was only thirty-three, and she had not yet out- 
lived the little pang that visited her whenever the head of 
youth and beauty leaned upon her for consolation. But 
one glance in her mirror always served as an instantane- 
ous pain-killer. So she gave one pale look into the 
crinkly old looking-glass on the wall above the gas-stove, 
turned down the flame a little lower from the buttling 
beef and potatoes, went over to the couch, and lifted Ce- 
cilia’s head to its confessional. 

^‘Go on and tell me, honey,” she said. know bow 
that it ain’t art that’s worrying you. You met him on 
a ferry-boat, didn’t you? Go on, Cecilia, kid, and tell 
your — your Aunt Hetty about it.” 


28 Options 

But youth and melancholy must first spend the surplus 
of sighs and tears that waft and float the barque of 
romance to its harbor in the delectable isles. Presently, 
through the stringy tendons that formed the bars of the 
confessional, the penitent — or was it the glorified com- 
municant of the sacred flame? — told her story without 
art or illumination. 

^‘It was only three days ago. I was coming back on 
the ferry from Jersey City. Old Mr. Schrum, an art 
dealer, told me of a rich man in Newark who wanted a 
miniature of his daughter painted. I went to see him 
and showed him some of my work. When I told him the 
price would be fifty dollars he laughed at me like a hy- 
ena. He said an enlarged crayon twenty times the size 
would cost him only eight dollars. 

had just enough money to buy my ferry ticket back 
to New York. I felt as if I didn’t want to live another 
day. I must have looked as I felt, for I saw him on the 
row of seats opposite me, looking at me as if he under- 
stood. He was nice-looking, but, oh, above everything 
else, he looked kind. When one is tired or unhappy or 
hopeless, kindness counts more than anything else. 

‘When I got so miserable that I couldn’t fight against 
it any longer, I got up and walked slowly out the rear 
door of the ferry-boat cabin. No one was there, and I 
slipped quickly over the rail, and dropped into the water. 
Oh, friend Hetty, it was cold, cold ! 

“For just one moment I wished I was back in the old 
iVaHembrosa, starving and hoping. And then I got 


29 


The Third Ingredient 

numb, and didn’t care. And then I felt that somebody 
else was in the water close by me, holding me up. He 
had followed me, and jumped in to save me. 

^^Somebody threw a thing like a big, white doughnut at 
us, and he made me put my arms through the hole. Then 
the ferry-boat backed, and they pulled us on board. Oh, 
Hetty, I was so ashamed of my wickedness in tr^dng to 
drown myself ; and, besides, my hair had all tumbled down 
and was sopping wet, and I was such a sight. 

^‘And then some men in blue clothes came around ; and 
he gave them his card, and I heard him tell them he had 
seen me drop my purse on the edge of the boat outside 
the rail, and in leaning over to get it I had fallen over- 
board. And then I remembered having read in the pa- 
pers that people who try to kill themselves are locked up 
in cells with people who try to kill other people, and I 
was afraid. 

^‘But some ladies on the boat took me downstairs to 
the furnace-room and got me nearly dry and did up my 
hair. When the boat landed, he came and put me in a 
cab. He was all dripping himself, but laughed as if he 
thought it was all a joke. He begged me, but I wouldn’t 
tell him my name nor where I lived, I was so ashamed.” 

“You were a fool, child,” said Hetty, kindly. “Wait 
till I turn the light up a bit. I wish to Heaven we had an 
onion.” 

“Then he raised his hat,” went on Cecilia, “and said : 
Wery well. But I’ll find you, anyhow. I’m going to 
claim my rights of salvage.’ Then he gave money to the 


3 ® Options 

cab-driver and told him to take me where I wanted to go, 
and walked away. What is ^salvage,’ Hetty?” 

^‘The edge of a piece of goods that ain’t hemmed,” said 
the shop-girl. ‘^You must have looked pretty well 
frazzled out to the little hero boy.” 

^"^It’s been three days,” moaned the miniature-painter, 
“and he hasn’t found me yet.” 

“Extend the time,” said Hetty. “This is a big town. 
Think of how many girls he might have to see soaked in 
water with their hair down before he would recognize you. 
The stew’s getting on fine — but, oh, for an onion! I’d 
even use a piece of garlic if I had it.” 

The beef and potatoes bubbled merrily, exhaling a 
mouth-watering savor that yet lacked something, leaving 
a hunger on the palate, a haunting, wistful desire for 
some lost and needful ingredient. 

“I came near drowning in that awful river,” said Ce- 
cilia, shuddering. 

“It ought to have more water in it,” said Hetty ; “the 
stew, I mean. I’ll go get some at the sink.” 

“It smells good,” said the artist. 

^^hat nasty old North River?” objected Hetty. “It 
smells to me like soap factories and wet setter-dogs — 
oh, you mean the stew. Well, I wish we had an onion 
for it. Did he look like l^e had money?” 

“First he looked kind,” said Cecilia. “I’m sure he 
was rich ; but that matters so little. When he drew out 
his bill-folder to pay the cabman you couldn’t help seeing 
hundreds and thousands of dollars in it. And I looked 


31 


The Third Ingredient 

over the cab doors and saw him leave the ferry station in 
a motor-car ; and the chauffeur gave him his bearskin t© 
put on, for he was sopping wet. And it was only three 
days ago.” 

^What a fool !” said Hetty shortly. 

*‘Oh, the chauffeur wasn’t wet,” breathed Cecilia. 
‘^And he drove the car away very nicely.” 

‘‘I mean you^'* said Hetty. ‘Tor not giving him your 
address.” 

“I never give my address to chauffeurs,” said Cecilia, 
haughtily. 

‘"I wish we had one,” said Hetty, disconsolately. 

“What for.?^” 

“For the stew, of course — oh, I mean an onion.” 

Hetty took a pitcher and started to the sink at the 
end of the hall. ^ 

A young man came down the stairs from above just as 
she was opposite the lower step. He was decently 
dressed, but pale and haggard. His eyes were dull with 
the stress of some burden of physical or mental woe. In 
his hand he bore an onion — a pink, smooth, solid, shin- 
ing onion, as large around as a ninety-eight-cent alarm 
clock. 

Hetty stopped. So did the young man. There was 
something Joan of Arc-ish, Herculean, and Una-ish in 
the look and pose of the shop-lady — she had cast off the 
roles of Job and Little-Red-Riding-Hood. The young 
man stopped at the foot of the stairs and coughed dis- 
tractedly. He felt marooned, held up, attacked, as- 


32 Options 

sailed, levied upon, sacked, assessed, panhandled, brow- 
beaten, though he knew not why. It was the look in 
Hetty’s eyes that did it. In them he saw the Jolly Roger 
fly to the masthead and an able seaman with a dirk be- 
tween his teeth scurry up the ratlines and nail it there. 
But as yet he did not know that the cargo he carried was 
the thing that had caused him to be so nearly blown out 
of the water without even a parley. 

^^Beg your pardon,” said Hetty, as sweetly as her 
dilute acetic acid tones permitted, “but did you find that 
onion on the stairs ? There was a hole in the paper bag ; 
and I’ve just come out to look for it.” 

The young man coughed for half a minute. The in- 
terval may have given him the courage to defend his own 
property. Also, he clutched his pungent prize greedily, 
and, with a show of spirit, faced his grim waylayer. 

“No,” he said huskily, “I didn’t find it on the stairs. 
It was given to me by Jack Sevens, on the top floor. If 
you don’t believe it, ask him. I’ll wait until you do.” 

“I know about Sevens,” said Hetty, sourly. “He 
writes books and things up there for the paper-and-rags 
man. We can hear the postman guy him all over the 
house when he brings them thick envelopes back. Say 
— do you live in the Vallambrosa.^ ” 

“I do not,” said the young man. “I come to see Sevens 
sometimes. He’s my friend. I live two blocks west.” 

“What are you going to do with the onion ? — begging 
your pardon,” said Hetty. 

“I’m going to eat it.” 


The Third Ingredient 33 

‘^Raw?” 

‘‘Yes : as soon as I get home.” 

“Haven’t you got anything else to eat with it.^” 

The young man considered briefly. 

“No,” he confessed; “there’s not another scrap 
of anything in my diggings to eat. I think old Jack 
is pretty hard up for grub in his shack, too. He hated 
to give up the onion, but I worried him into parting 
with it.” 

“Man,” said Hetty, fixing him with her world-sapient 
eyes, and laying a bony but impressive finger on his 
sleeve, “you’ve known trouble, too, haven’t you.^” 

“Lots,” said the onion owner, promptly. “But this 
onion is my own property, honestly come by. If you will 
excuse me, I must be going.” 

“Listen,” said Hetty, paling a little with anxiety. 
“Raw onion is a mighty poor diet. And so is a beef- 
stew without one. Now, if you’re Jack Bevens’ friend, 
I guess you’re nearly right. There’s a little lady — a 
friend of mine — in my room there at the end of the hall. 
Both of us are out of luck ; and we had just potatoes and 
meat between us. They’re stewing now. But it ain’t 
got any soul. There’s something lacking to it. There’s 
certain things in life that are naturally intended to fit 
and belong together. One is pink cheese-cloth and green 
roses, and one is ham and eggs, and one is Irish and 
trouble. And the other one is beef and potatoes with 
onions. And still Mother one is people who are up 
against it and other people in the same fix.” 


34 Options 

The young man went into a protracted paroxysm of 
coughing. With one hand he hugged his onion to his 
bosom. 

‘‘No doubt ; no doubt/’ said he, at length. “But, as I 
said, I must be going because ” 

Hetty clutched his sleeve firmly. 

“Don’t be a Dag©, Little Brother. Don’t eat raw 
onions. Chip it in toward the dinner and line yourself 
inside with the best stew you ever licked a spoon over. 
Must two ladies knock a young gentleman down and drag 
him inside for the honor of dining with ’em? No harm 
shall befall you. Little Brother. Loosen up and fall into 
line.” 

The young man’s pale face relaxed into a grin. 

“Believe I’ll go you,” he said, brightening. “If my 
onion is good as a credential. I’ll accept the invitation 
gladly.” 

“It’s good as that, but better as seasoning,” said 
Hetty. “You come and stand outside the door till I ask 
my lady friend if she has any objections. And don’t 
run away with that letter of recommendation before I 
come out.” 

Hetty went into her room and closed the door. The 
young man waited outside. 

“Cecilia, kid,” said the shop-girl, oiling the sharp saw 
of her voice as well as she could, “there’s an onion out- 
side. With a young man attached. I’ve asked him in 
to dinner. You ain’t going to kick, are you?” 

“Oh, dear !” said Cecilia, sitting up and patting her 


The Third Ingredient 35 

artistic hair. She cast a mournful glance at the ferry- 
boat poster on the wall. 

‘‘Nit,” said Hetty. “It ain’t him. You’re up against 
real life now. I believe you said your hero friend had 
money and automobiles. This is a poor skeezicks that s 
got nothing to cat but an onion. But he’s easy-spoken 
and not a f reshy. I imagine he’s been a gentleman, he’s 
so low down now. And we need the onion. Shall I 
bring him in? I’ll guarantee his behavior.” 

“Hetty, dear,” sighed Cecilia, “I’m so hungry. What 
difference does it make whether he’s a prince or a burglar ? 
I don’t care. Bring him in if he’s got anything to eat 
with him.” 

Hetty went back into the hall. The onion man was 
gone. Her heart missed a beat, and a gray look settled 
over her face except on her nose and cheek-bones. And 
then the tides of life flowed in again, for she saw him lean- 
ing out of the front window at the other end of the hall. 
She hurried there- He was shouting to some one below. 
The noise of the street overpowered the sound of her foot- 
steps. She looked down over his shoulder, saw whom he 
was speaking to, and heard his words. He pulled him- 
self in from the window-sill and saw her standing over him. 

Hetty’s eyes bored into him like two steel gimlets. 

“Don’t lie to me,” she said, calmly. “What were you 
going to do with that onion?” 

The young man suppressed a coUgh and faced her 
resolutely. His manner was that of one who had been 
bearded sufBciently. 


36 Options 

was going to eat it,” said he, with emphatic slow- 
ness ; ‘^just as I told you before.” 

‘‘And you have nothing else to eat at home 

“Not a thing.” 

“What kind of work do you do.^” 

“I am not working at anything just now.” 

“Then why,” said Hetty, with her voice set on its 
sharpest edge, “do you lean out of windows and give or- 
ders to chauffeurs in green automobiles in the street be- 
low.?” 

The young man flushed, and his dull eyes began to 
sparkle. 

“Because, madam,” said he, in accelerando tones, “I 
pay the chauffeur’s wages and I own the automobile — 
and also this onion — this onion, madam,” 

He flourished the onion within an inch of Hetty’s nose. 
The shop-lady did not retreat a hair’s-breadth. 

“Then why do you eat onions,” she said, with biting 
contempt, “and nothing else.?” 

“I never said I did,” retorted the 3’^oung man, heatedly. 
“I said I had nothing else to eat where I live. I am not 
a delicatessen storekeeper.” 

“Then why,” pursued Hetty, inflexibly, “were you 
going to eat a raw onion.?” 

“My mother,” said the young man, “always made me 
eat one for a cold. Pardon my referring to a physical 
infirmity ; but you may have noticed that I have a very, 
very severe cold. I was going to eat the onion and go to 
bed. I wonder why I am standing here and apologizing 
to you for it.” 


The Third Ingredient 37 

“How did 3^ou catch this cold?” went on Hetty, sus- 
piciously. 

The young man seemed to have arrived at some ex- 
treme height of feeling. There were two modes of de- 
scent open to him — a burst of rage or a surrender to 
the ridiculous. He chose wisely; and the empty hall 
echoed his hoarse laughter. 

“You’re a dandy,” said he. “And I don’t blame you 
for being careful. I don’t mind telling you. I got wet. 
I was on a North River ferry a few days ago when a girl 
jumped overboard. Of course, I ” 

Hetty extended her hand, interrupting his story. 

“Give me the onion,” she said. 

The young man set his jaw a trifle harder. 

“Give me the onion,” she repeated. 

He grinned, and laid it in her hand. 

Then Hetty’s infrequent, grim, melancholy smile 
showed itself. She took the young man’s arm and 
pointed with her other hand to the door of her room. 

“Little Brother,” she said, “go in there. The little 
fool you fished out of the river is there waiting for you. 
Go on in. I’ll give you three minutes before I come. 
Potatoes is in there, waiting. Go on in. Onions.” 

After he had tapped at the door and entered, Hetty 
began to peel and wash the onion at the sink. She gave 
a gray look at the gray roofs outside and the smile on 
her face vanished by little jerks and twitches. 

“But it’s us,” she said, grimly, to herself, “it’s us 
that furnished the beef.” 


THE HIDING OF BLACK BILL 


A LANK, strong, red-faced man with a Wellingtoa 
beak and small, fiery eyes tempered by flaxen lashes, sat 
on the station platform at Los Pinos swinging his legs to 
and fro. At his side sat another man, fat, melancholy, 
and seedy, who seemed to be his friend. They had the 
appearance of men to whom life had appeared as a rever- 
sible coat — seamy on both sides. 

^‘Ain’t seen you in about four years, Ham,” said the 
seedy man. ‘Which way you been travelling?” 

“Texas,” said the red-faced man. “It was too cold 
in Alaska for me. And I found it warm in Texas. I’ll 
tell you about one hot spell I went througli there. 

“One morning I steps off the International at a water- 
tank and lets it go on without me. ’Twas a ranch coun- 
try, and fuller of spite-houses than New York City. 
Only out there they build ’em twenty miles away so you 
can’t smell what they’ve got for dinner, instead of run- 
ning ’em up two inches from their neighbors’ windows. 

“There wasn’t any roads in sight, so I footed It ’cross 
country. The grass w^as shoe-top deep, and the mesquite 
timber looked just like a peach orchard. It was so much 
like a gentleman’s private estate that every minute you 
expected a kennelful of bulldogs to run out and bite you. 

38 


39 


The Hiding of Black Bill 

But I must have walked twenty miles before I came in 
sight of a ranch-house. It was a little one, about as big 
as an elevated railroad station. 

‘‘There was a little man in a white shirt and brown 
overalls and a pink handkerchief around his neck rolling 
cigarettes under a tree in front of the door. 

“‘Greetings,’ says L ‘Any refreshment, welcome, 
emoluments, or even work for a comparative stranger?’ 

“‘Oh, come in,’ says he, in a refined tone. ‘Sit 
down on that stool, please. I didn’t hear your horse 
coming.’ 

“‘He isn’t near enough yet,’ says I. ‘I walked. I 
don’t want to be a burden, but I wonder if you have three 
or four gallons of water handy.’ 

“ ‘You do look pretty dusty,’ says he ; ‘but our bathing 
arrangements ’ 

“ ‘It’s a drink I want,’ says I. ‘Never mind the dust 
that’s on the outside.’ 

“He gets me a dipper of water out of a red jar hang- 
ing up, and then goes on : 

“ ‘Do you want work?’ 

“ ‘For a time,’ says I. ‘This is a rather quiet section 
of the country, isn’t it.^’ 

“‘It is,’ says he. ‘Sometimes — so I have been told 
— one sees no human being pass for weeks at a time. 
I’ve been here only a month. I bought the ranch from 
an old settler who wanted to move farther west.’ 

“ ‘It suits me,’ says I. ‘Quiet and retirement are good 
for a man sometimes. And I need a job. I can tend 


40 Options 

bar, salt mines, lecture, float stock, do a little middle- 
weight slugging, and play the piano.’ 

‘Can you herd sheep ?’ asks the little ranchman. 

“‘Do you mean have I heard sheep says I. 

“ ‘Can you herd ’em — take charge of a flock of ’em?’ 
says he. 

“‘Oh,’ says I, ‘now I understand. You mean chase 
’em around and bark at ’em like collie dogs. Well, I 
might,’ says I. ‘I’ve never exactly done any sheep- 
herding, but I’ve often seen ’em from car windows masti- 
cating daisies, and they don’t look dangerous.’ 

“‘I’m short a herder,’ says the ranchman, ‘You 
never can depend on the Mexicans. I’ve only got two 
flocks. You may take out my bunch of muttons — there 
are only eight hundred of ’em — in the morning, if you 
like. The pay is twelve dollars a month and your rations 
furnished. You camp in a tent on the prairie with your 
sheep. You do your own cooking, but wood and water 
are brought to your camp. It’s an easy job.’ 

“‘I’m on,’ says I. ‘I’ll take the job even if I have 
to garland my brow and hold on to a crook and wear 
a loose effect and play on a pipe like the shepherds do 
in pictures.’ 

“So the next morning the little ranchman helps me 
drive the flock of muttons from the corral to about two 
miles out and let ’em graze on a little hillside on the 
prairie. He gives me a lot of instructions about not 
letting bunches of them stray off from the herd, and 
driving ’em down to a water-hole to drink at noon. 


The Hiding of Black Bill 41 

bring out your tent and camping outfit and 
rations in the buckboard before night/ says he, 

Tine/ says I. ‘And don’t forget the rations. Nor 
the camping outfit. And be sure to bring the tent. 
Your name’s ZollicofFer, ain’t it?’ 

“ ‘My name/ says he, ‘is Henry Ogden.’ 

“‘All right, Mr. Ogden,’ says I. ‘Mine is Mr. Per- 
cival Saint Clair.’ 

“I herded sheep for five days on the Rancho Chiquito ; 
and then the wool entered my soul. That getting next to 
Nature certainly got next to me. I was lonesomer than 
Crusoe’s goat. I’ve seen a lot of persons more entertain- 
ing as companions than those sheep were. I’d drive ’em 
to the corral and pen ’em every evening, and then cook 
my corn-bread and mutton and coffee, and lie down in a 
tent the size of a tablecloth, and listen to the coyotes and 
whip-poor-wills singing around the camp. 

“The fifth evening, after I had corralled my costly but 
uncongenial muttons, I walked over to the ranch-house 
and stepped in the door. 

‘“Mr. Ogden/ says I, ‘you and me have got to get 
sociable. Sheep are all very well to dot the landscape 
and furnish eight-dollar cotton suitings for man, but for 
table-talk and fireside companions they rank along with 
five-o’clock teazers. If you’ve got a deck of cards, or a 
parcheesi outfit, or a game of authors, get ’em out, and 
let’s get on a mental basis. I’ve got to do something in 
an intellectual line, if it’s only to knock somebody’s 
brains out.’ 


42 Options 

‘^This Henry Ogden was a peculiar kind of ranchman. 
He wore finger-rings and a big gold watch and careful 
neckties. And his face was calm, and his nose-spectacles 
was kept very shiny. I saw once, in Muscogee, an out- 
law hung for murdering six men, who was a dead ringer 
for him. But I knew a preacher in Arkansas that you 
would have taken to be his brother. I didn’t care much 
for him either way ; what I wanted was some fellowship 
and communion with holy saints or lost sinners — any- 
thing sheepless would do. 

^Well, Saint Clair,’ says he, laving down the book he 
was reading, ‘I guess it must be pretty lonesome for you 
at first. And I don’t deny that it’s monotonous for me. 
Are you sure you corralled your sheep so they won’t 
stray out 

‘‘ ‘They’re shut up as tight as the jury of a millionaire 
murderer,’ says I. ‘And I’ll be back with them long 
before they’ll need their trained nurse.’ 

“So Ogden digs up a deck of cards, and we play casino. 
After five days and nights of my sheep-camp it was like a 
toot on Broadway. When I caught big casino I felt as 
excited as if I had made a million in Trinity. And when 
H. O. loosened up a little and told the story about the 
lady in the Pullman car I laughed for five minutes. 

“That showed what a comparative thing life is. A 
man may see so much that he’d be bored td turn his head 
to look at a $3,000,000 fire or Joe Weber or the Adriatic 
Sea. But let him herd sheep for a spell, and you’ll see 
him splitting his ribs laughing at ‘Curfew Shall Not Ring 


The Hiding of Black Bill 43 

To-night,’ or really enjoying himself playing cards with 
ladies. 

^^By-and-by Ogden gets out a decanter of Bourbon, 
and then there is a total eclipse of sheep. 

‘‘‘Do you remember reading in the papers, about a 
month ago,’ says he, ‘about a train hold-up on the M. K. 
& T. ? The express agent was shot through the shoulder 
and about $15,000 in currency taken. And it’s said that 
only one man did the job.’ 

“‘Seems to me I do,’ says I. ‘But such things hap- 
pen so often they don’t linger long in the human Texas 
mind. Did they overtake, overhaul, seize, or lay hands 
upon the despoiler 

“ ‘He escaped,’ says Ogden. ‘And I was just reading 
in a paper to-day that the officers have tracked him down 
into this part of the country. It seems the bills the 
robber got were all the first issue of currency to the 
Second National Bank of Espinosa City. And so they’ve 
followed the trail where they’ve been spent, and it leads 
this way.’ 

“Ogden pours out some more Bourbon, and shoves me 
the bottle. 

“ ‘I imagine,’ says I, after ingurgitating another modi- 
cum of the royal booze, ‘that it wouldn’t be at all a disin- 
genuous idea for a train-robber to run down into this part 
of the country to hide for a spell. A sheep-ranch, now,’ 
says I, ‘would be the finest kind of a place. Who’d ever 
expect to find such a desperate character among these 
song-birds and muttons and wild flowers? And, by the 


44 Options 

way/ says I, kind of looking H. Ogden over, Vas there 
any description mentioned of this single-handed terror? 
Was his lineaments or height and thickness or teeth fill- 
ings or style of habiliments set forth in print?’ 

“ ^Why, no,’ says Ogden ; Hhey say nobody got a good 
sight of him because he wore a mask. But they know it 
was a train-robber called Black Bill, because he always 
works alone and because he dropped a handkerchief in 
the express-car that had his name on it.’ 

^^‘All right,’ says I. approve of Black Bill’s re- 
treat to the sheep-ranges. I guess they won’t find him.’ 

^“There’s one thousand dollars reward for his cap- 
ture,’ says Ogden. 

‘I don’t need that kind of money,’ says I, looking Mr. 
Sheepman straight in the eye. ^The twelve dollars a 
month you pay me is enough. I need a rest, and I can 
save up until I get enough to pay my fare to Texarkana, 
where my widowed mother lives. If Black Bill,’ I goes 
on, looking significantly at Ogden, Vas to have come 
down this way — say, a month ago — and bought a lit- 
tle sheep-ranch and ’ 

‘‘ ^Stop,’ says Ogden, getting out of his chair and look- 
ing pretty vicious. ‘Do you mean to insinuate ’ 

“‘Nothing,’ says I; ‘no insinuations. I’m stating a 
hypodermical case. I say, if Black Bill had come down 
here and bought a sheep-ranch and hired me to Little- 
Boy-Blue ’em and treated me square and friendly, as 
you’ve done, he’d never have anything to fear from me. 
A man is a man, regardless of any complications he may 


The Hiding of Black Bill 45 

have with sheep or railroad trains. Now you know 
where I stand.’ 

‘^Ogden looks black as camp-coffee for nine seconds* 
and then he laughs, amused. 

‘You’ll do, Saint Clair,’ says he. ‘If I was Black Bill 
I wouldn’t be afraid to trust you. Let’s have a game or 
two of seven-up to-night. That is, if you don’t mind 
playing with a train-robber.’ 

‘“I’ve told you,’ says I, ‘my oral sentiments, and 
there’s no strings to ’em.’ 

“While I was shuffling after the first hand, I asks 
Ogden, as if the idea was a kind of a casualty, where he 
was from. 

“‘Oh,’ says he, ‘from the Mississippi Valley.’ 

“‘That’s a nice little place,’ says I. ‘I’ve often 
stopped over there. But didn’t you find the sheets a lit- 
tle damp and the food poor.^ Now, I hail,’ says I, ‘from 
the Pacific Slope. Ever put up there .^’ 

“ ‘Too draughty,’ says Ogden. ‘But if you’re ever in 
the Middle West just mention my name, and you’ll get 
foot-warmers and dripped coffee.’ 

“ ‘Well,’ says I, ‘I wasn’t exactlj^ fishing for your pri- 
vate telephone number and the middle name of your aunt 
that carried off the Cumberland Presbyterian minister. 
It don’t matter. I just want you to know you are safe 
in the hands of your shepherd. Now, don’t play hearts 
on spades, and don’t get nervous.’ 

“ ‘Still harping,’ says Ogden, laughing again. ‘Don’t 
you suppose that if I was Black Bill and thought you 


46 Options 

suspected me, I’d put a Winchester bullet into you and 
stop my nervousness if I had any?’ 

‘‘^Not any,’ says I. ‘A man who’s got the nerve to 
hold up a train single-handed wouldn’t do a trick like 
that. I’ve knocked about enough to know that them are 
the kind of men who put a value on a friend. Not that I 
can claim being a friend of yours, Mr. Ogden,’ says I, 
^being only^ your sheep-herder; but under more expedi- 
tious circumstances we might have been.’ 

‘^‘Forget the sheep temporarily, I beg,’ says Ogden, 
‘and cut for deal.’ 

“About four days afterward, while my muttons was 
nooning on the water-hole and I deep in the interstices of 
making a pot of coffee, up rides softly on the grass a 
mysterious person in the garb of the being he wished to 
represent. He was dressed somewhere between a Kansas 
City detective, Buffalo Bill, and the town dog-catcher of 
Baton Rouge. His chin and eye wasn’t molded on fight- 
ing lines, so I knew he was only a scout. 

“‘Herdin’ sheep?’ he asks me. 

“ ‘Well,’ says I, ‘to a man of your evident gumptional 
endowments, I wouldn’t have the nerve to state that I 
am engaged in decorating old bronzes or oiling bicycle 
sprockets.’ 

“‘You don’t talk or look like a sheep-herder to me,’ 
says he. 

“ ‘But you talk like what you look like to me,’ says 1. 

“And then he asks me who I was working for, and I 


47 


The Hiding of Black Bill 

shows him Rancho Chiquito, two miles away, in the 
shadow of a low hill, and he tells me he’s a deputy 
sheriff. 

^There’s a train-robber called Black Bill supposed to 
be somewhere in these parts,’ says the scout. ‘He’s been 
traced as far as San Antonio, and may be farther. Have 
you seen or heard of any strangers around here during 
the past month?’ 

“ ‘I have not,’ says I, ‘except a report of one over at 
the Mexican quarters of Loomis’ ranch, on the Frio.’ 

“ ‘What do you know about him?’ asks the deputy. 

“ ‘He’s three days old,’ says I. 

“ ‘What kind of a looking man is the man you work 
for?’ he asks. ‘Does old George Ramey own this place 
yet? He’s run sheep here for the last ten years, but 
never had no success.’ 

“‘The old man has sold out and gone West,’ I tells 
him. ‘Another sheep-fancier bought him out about a 
month ago.’ 

“ ‘What kind of a looking man is he ?’ asks the deputy 
again. 

“ ‘Oh,’ says I, ‘a big, fat kind of a Dutchman with long 
whiskers and blue specs. I don’t think he knows a sheep 
from a ground-squirrel. I guess old George soaked him 
pretty well on the deal,’ says I. 

“After indulging himself in a lot more non-communi- 
cative information and two thirds of my dinner, the 
deputy rides away. 

“That night I mentions the matter to Ogden. 


48 OptioTis 

^They’re drawing the tendrils of the octopus around 
Black Bill,’ says I. And then I told him about the 
deputy sheriff, and how I’d described him to the deputy, 
and what the deputy said about the matter. 

^^‘Oh, well,’ says Ogden, ‘let’s don’t borrow any of 
Black Bill’s troubles. We’ve a few of our own. Get 
the Bourbon out of the cupboard and we’ll drink to his 
health — unless,’ says he, with his little cackling laugh, 
‘you’re prejudiced against train-robbers.’ 

“ ‘I’ll drink,’ says I, ‘to any man who’s a friend to a 
friend. And I believe that Black Bill,’ I goes on, ‘would 
be that. So here’s to Black Bill, and may he have good 
luck.’ 

“And both of us drank. 

“About two weeks later comes shearing-time. The 
sheep had to be driven up to the ranch, and a lot of 
frowzy-headed Mexicans would snip the fur off of them 
with back-action scissors. So the afternoon before the 
barbers were to come I hustled my underdone muttons 
over the hill, across the dell, down by the winding brook, 
and up to the ranch-house, where I penned ’em in a corral 
and bade ’em my nightly adieus. 

“I went from there to the ranch-house. I find H. 
Ogden, Esquire, lying asleep on his little cot bed. I guess 
he had been overcome by anti-insomnia or diswakefulness 
or some of the diseases peculiar to the sheep business. 
His mouth and vest were open, and he breathed like a 
second-hand bicycle pump. I looked at him and gave 
vent to just a few musings. ‘Imperial Caesar,’ says I, 


The Hiding of Black Bill 49 

‘asleep in such a way, might shut his mouth and keep 
the wind away.’ 

“A man asleep is certainly a sight to make angels weep. 
What good is all his brain, muscle, backing, nerve, in- 
fluence, and family connections? He’s at the mercy of 
his enemies, and more so of his friends. And he’s about 
as beautiful as a cab-horse leaning against the Metropol- 
itan Opera House at 12.30 a. m. dreaming of the plains 
of Arabia. Now, a woman asleep you regard as dif- 
erent. No matter how she looks, you know it’s better 
for all hands for her to be that way. 

“Well, I took a drink of Bourbon and one for Ogden, 
and started in to be comfortable while he was taking his 
nap. He had some books on* his table on indigenous 
subjects, such as Japan and drainage and physical 
culture — and some tobacco, which seemed more to the 
point. 

“After I’d smoked a few, and listened to the sartorial 
breathing of H. 0., I happened to look out the window 
toward the shearing-pens, where there was a kind of a 
road coming up from a kind of a road across a kind of a 
creek farther away. 

“I saw five men riding up to the house. All of ’em 
carried guns across their saddles, and among ’em was the 
deputy that had talked to me at my camp. 

“They rode up careful, in open formation, with their 
guns ready. I set apart with my eye the one I opinion- 
ated to be the boss muck-raker of this law-and-order 
cavalry. 


50 


Options 


“"Good-evening, gents,’ says I. ^Won’t yc light, 
and tie your horses?’* 



“The boss rides up close, and swings his gun^over till 
the opening in it seems to cover my whole front eleva- 
tion. 

“ ‘Don’t you move your hands none,’ says he, ‘till you 
and me indulge in a adequate amount of necessary con- 
versation.’ 

“ ‘I will not,’ says I. ‘I am no deaf-mute, and 
therefore will not have to disobey your injunctions in 
replying.’ 

“ ‘We are on the lookout,’ says he, ‘for Black Bill, the 
man that held up the Katy for $15,000 in May. We are 
searching the ranches and everybody on ’em. What is 
your name, and what do you do on this ranch?’ 

“ ‘Captain,’ says I, ‘Percival Saint Clair is my occu- 
pation, and my name is sheep-herder. I’ve got my 
flock of veals — no, muttons — penned here to-night. 
The searchers are coming to-morrow to give them a hair- 
cut — with baa-a-rum, I suppose.’ 

“‘Where’s the boss of this ranch?’ the captain of the 
gang asks me. 

“‘Wait just a minute, cap’n,’ says L ‘Wasn’t there 
a kind of a reward offered for the capture of this desper- 
ate character you have referred to in your preamble?’ 

“ ‘There’s a thousand dollars reward offered,’ says the 
captain, ‘but it’s for his capture and conviction. There 
don’t seem to be no provision made for an informer.’ 


The Hiding of Black Bill 51 

‘‘ looks like it might rain in a day or so,’ says I, in 
a tired way, looking up at the cerulean blue sky. 

you know anything about the locality, disposi- 
tion, or secret! veness of this here Black Bill,’ says he, in 
a severe dialect, ^you are amiable to the law in not re- 
porting it.’ 

heard a fence-rider say,’ says I, in a desultory kind 
of voice, ‘that a Mexican told a cowboy named Jake over 
at Pidgin’s store on the Nueces that he heard that Black 
Bill had been seen in Matamoras by a sheepman’s cousin 
two weeks ago.’ 

“ ‘Tell you what I’ll do. Tight Mouth,’ says the cap- 
tain, after looking me over for bargains. ‘If you put us 
on so we can scoop Black Bill, I’ll pay you a hundred 
dollars out of my own — out of our own — pockets. 
That’s liberal,’ says he. ‘You ain’t entitled to anything. 
Now, what do you say.^^’ 

“ ‘Cash down now I ask. 

“The captain has a sort of discussion with his help- 
mates, and they all produce the contents of their pockets 
for analj^sis. Out of the general results they figured up 
$102.30 in cash and $31 worth of plug tobacco. 

“‘Come nearer, capitan meeo,’ says I, ‘and listen.’ 
He so did. 

“ ‘I am mighty poor and low down in the world,’ says 
I. ‘I am working for twelve dollars a month trying to 
keep a lot of animals together whose only thought seems 
to be to get asunder. Although,’ says I, ‘I regard my- 
self as some better than the State of South Dakota, it’s a 


52 Options 

come-down to a man who has heretofore regarded sheep 
only in the form of chops. I’m pretty far reduced in the 
world on account of foiled ambitions and rum and a kind 
of cocktail they make along the P. R. R. all the way from 
Scranton to Cincinnati — dry gin, French vermouth, one 
squeeze of a lime, and a good dash of orange bitters. If 
you’re ever up that way, don’t fail to let one try you. 
And, again,’ says I, ^I have never yet went back on a 
friend. I’ve stayed by ’em when they had plenty, and 
when adversity’s overtaken me I’ve never forsook ’em. 

‘But,’ I goes, on, ‘this is not exactly the case of a 
friend. Twelve dollars a month is only bowing-ac- 
quaintance money. And I do not consider brown beans 
and cornbread the food of friendship. I am a poor man,’ 
says I, ‘and I have a widowed mother in Texarkana. 
You will find Black Bill,’ says I, ‘lying asleep in this 
house on a cot in the room to your right. He’s the man 
you want, as I know from his words and conversation. 
He was in a way a friend,’ I explains, ‘and if I was the 
man I once was the entire product of the mines of Gon- 
dola would not have tempted me to betray him. But,’ 
says I, ‘every week half of the beans was wormy, and not 
nigh enough wood in camp. 

“ ‘Better go in careful, gentlemen,’ says I. ‘He seems 
impatient at times, and when you think of his late pro- 
fessional pursuits one would look for abrupt actions if 
he was come upon sudden.’ 

“So the whole posse unmounts and ties their horses, 
and unlimbers their ammunition and equipments, and 


The Hiding of Black Bill 53 

tiptoes into the house. And I follows, like Delilah when 
she set the Philip Steins on to Samson. 

^^The leader of the posse shakes Ogden and wakes him 
up. And then he jumps up, and two more of the reward- 
hunters grab him. Ogden was mighty tough with all 
his slimness, and he gives ’em as neat a single-footed tus- 
sle against odds as I ever see. 

What does this mean.^’ he says, after they had him 
down. 

‘You’re scooped in, Mr. Black Bill,’ says the cap- 
tain. ‘That’s all.’ 

“ ‘It’s an outrage,’ says H. Ogden, madder yet. 

“ ‘It was,’ says the peace-and-good-will man. ‘The 
Katy wasn’t bothering you, and there’s a law against 
monkeying with express packages.’ 

“And he sits on H. Ogden’s stomach and goes through 
his pockets symptomatically and careful. 

“ ‘I’ll make you perspire for this,’ says Ogden, perspir- 
ing some himself. ‘I can prove who I am.’ 

“ ‘So can I,’ says the captain, as he draws from H. 
Ogden’s inside coat-pocket a handful of new bills of the 
Second National Bank of Espinosa City. ‘Your regular 
engraved Tuesdays-and-Fridays visiting-card wouldn’t 
have a louder voice in proclaiming your indemnity than 
this here currency. You can get up now and prepare to 
go with us and expatriate your sins.’ 

“H. Ogden gets up and fixes his necktie. He says no 
more after they have taken the money off of him. 

“‘A well-greased idea,’ says the sheriff captain, ad- 


54 Options 

miring, ‘to slip ofF down here and buy a little sheep- 
ranch where the hand of man is seldom heard. It was 
the slickest hide-out I ever see,’ says the captain. 

“So one of the men goes to the shearing-pen and hunts 
up the other herder, a Mexican they call John Sallies, 
and he saddles Ogden’s horse, and the sheriffs all ride up 
close around him with their guns in hand, ready to take 
their prisoner to town. 

“Before starting, Ogden puts the ranch in J chn Sallies’ 
hands and gives him orders about the shearing and where 
to graze the sheep, just as if he intended to be back in a 
few days. And a couple of hours afterward one Percival 
Saint Clair, an ex-sheep-herder of the Rancho Chiquito, 
might have been seen, with a hundred and nine dollars 
* — wages and blood money — in his pocket, riding south 
on another horse belonging to said ranch.” 

The red-faced man paused and listened. The whistle 
of a coming freight-train sounded far away among the 
low hills. 

The fat, seedy man at his side sniffed, and shook his 
frowzy head slowly and disparagingly. 

“What is it, Snipy asked the other. “Got the blues 
again ?” 

“No, I ain’t,” said the seedy one, sniffing again. “But 
I don’t like your talk. You and me have been friends, 
off and on, for fifteen year; and I never yet knew or 
heard of you giving anybody up to the law — not no one. 
And here was a man whose saleratus you had ct and at 
whose table you had played games of cards — if casino 


The Hiding of Black Bill 55 

can be so called. And yet you inform him to the law and 
take money for it. It never was like you, I say.” 

‘‘This H. Ogden,” resumed the red-faced man, 
“through a lawyer, proved himself free by alibis and 
other legal terminalities, as I so heard afterward. He 
never suffered no harm. He did me favors, and I hated 
to hand him over.” 

“How about the bills they found in his pocket.^” asked 
the seedy man. 

“I put ’em there,” said the red-faced man, “while he 
was asleep, when I saw the posse riding up. I was Black 
Bill. Look out, Snipy, here she comes! We’ll board 
her on the bumpers when she takes water.” 


SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLS 


I 

Old Jerome Warren lived in a hundred-thousand-dol- 
lar house at So East Fifty-Soforth Street. He was a 
downtown broker, so rich that he could afford to walk — 
for his health — a few blocks in the direction of his 
office every morning and then call a cab. 

He had an adopted son, the son of an old friend named 
Gilbert — Cyril Scott could play him nicely — who was 
becoming a successful painter as fast as he could squeeze 
the paint out of his tubes. Another member of the house- 
hold was Barbara Ross, a step-niece. Man is born to 
trouble ; so, as old Jerome had no family of his own, he 
took up the burdens of others. 

Gilbert and Barbara got along swimmingly. There 
was a tacit and tactical understanding all round that the 
two would stand up under a floral bell some high noon, 
and promise the minister to keep old Jerome’s money in 
a state of high commotion. But at this point compli- 
cations must be introduced. 

Thirty years before, when old Jerome was young 
Jerome, there was a brother of his named Dick, Dick 
went West to seek his or somebody else’s fortune. Noth- 
ing was heard of him until one day old Jerome had i 


Schools and Schools 


57 


letter from his brother. It was badly written on ruled 
paper that smelled of salt bacon and coffee-grounds. 
The writing was asthmatic and the spelling St. Vitusy. 

It appeared that instead of Dick having forced For- 
tune to stand and deliver, he had been held up himself, and 
made to give hostages to the enemy. That is, as his letter 
disclosed, he was on the point of pegging out with a 
complication of disorders that even whiskey had failed to 
check. All that his thirty years of prospecting had net- 
ted him was one daughter, nineteen years old, as per in- 
voice, whom he was shipping East, charges prepaid, for 
Jerome to clothe, feed, educate, comfort, and cherish for 
the rest of her natural life or until matrimony should 
them part. 

Old Jerome was a board-walk. Everybody knows that 
the world is supported by the shoulders of Atlas; and 
that Atlas stands on a rail-fence; and that the rail- 
fence is built on a turtle’s back. Now, the turtle has to 
stand on something; and that is a board-walk made of 
men like old Jerome. 

I do not know whether immortality shall accrue to 
man ; but if not so, I would like to know when men like old 
Jerome get what is due them? 

They met Nevada Warren at the station. She was a 
little girl, deeply sunburned and wholesomely good-look- 
ing, with a manner that was frankly unsophisticated, yet 
one that not even a cigar-drummer would intrude upon 
without thinking twice. Looking at her, somehow you 
would expect to see her in a short skirt and leather leg- 


58 Options 

gings, shooting glass balls or taming mustangs. But in 
her plain white w^aist and black skirt she sent you guess- 
ing again. With an easy exhibition of strength she 
swung along a heavy Valise, w^hich the uniformed porters 
tried in vain to wrest from her, 

am sure we shall be the best of friends,” said Bar- 
bara, pecking at the firm, sunburned cheek. 

‘‘I hope so,” said Nevada. 

‘‘Dear little niece,” said old Jerome, “you are as 
welcome to my house as if it were your father’s own.” 

“Thanks,” said Nevada. 

“And I am going to call you ‘cousin,’” said Gilbert, 
with his charming smile. 

“Take the valise, please,” said Nevada. “It weighs 
a million pounds. It’s got samples from six of dad’s old 
mines in it,” she explained to Barbara, “I calculate 
they’d assay about nine cents to the thousand tons, but 
I promised him to bring them along.” 

II 

It is a common custom to refer to the usual complica- 
tion between one man and two ladies, or one lady and two 
men, or a lady and a man and a nobleman, or — well, any 
of those problems — as the triangle. But they are never 
unqualified triangles. They are always isosceles — 
never equilateral. So, upon the coming of Nevada War- 
ren, she and Gilbert and Barbara Ross lined up into such 
a figurative triangle; and of that triangle Barbara 
formed the hypotenuse. 


Schools and Schools 


59 


One morning old Jerome was lingering long after 
breakfast over the dullest morning paper in the city be- 
fore setting forth to his down town fly-trap. He had 
become quite fond of Nevada, finding in her much of his 
dead brother’s quiet independence and unsuspicious 
frankness. 

A maid brought In a note for Miss Nevada Warren, 
messenger-boy delivered it at the door, please,” 
she said. ^‘He’s waiting for an answer.” 

Nevada, who was whistling a Spanish waltz between 
her teeth, and watching the carriages and autos roll by 
in the street, took the envelope. She knew it was from 
Gilbert, before she opened it, by the little gold palette 
in the upper left-hand corner. 

After tearing it open she pored over the contents for 
a while, absorbedly. Then, with a serious face, she went 
and stood at her uncle’s elbow. 

‘^Uncle Jerome, Gilbert is a nice boy, isn’t he?” 

‘Why, bless the child !” said old Jerome, crackling his 
paper loudly ; “of course he Is. I raised him myself.” 

“He wouldn’t w^rite anything to anybody that w^asn’t 
exactly — I mean that everybody couldn’t know and 
read, w^ould he?” 

“I’d just like to see him try it,” said uncle, tearing a 
handful from his new^spaper. “Wh}^ w^hat ” 

“Read this note he just sent me, uncle, and see if you 
think it’s all right and proper. You see, I don’t know 
much about city people and their ways.” 

Old Jerome threw his paper down and set both his feet 


60 Options 

upon it. He took Gilbert’s note and fiercely perused it 
twice, and then a third time. 

‘‘Why, child,” said he, “you had me almost excited, 
although I was sure of that boy. He’s a duplicate of his 
father, and he was a gilt-edged diamond. He only asks 
if you and Barbara will be ready at four o’clock this 
afternoon for an automobile drive over to Long Island. 
I don’t see anything to criticise in it except the station- 
ery. I always did hate that shade of blue.” 

“Would it be all right to go?” asked Nevada, eagerly. 

“Yes, yes, yes, child; of course. Why not? Still, it 
pleases me to see you so careful and candid. Go, by all 
means. 

“I didn’t know,” said Nevada, demurely. “I thought 
I’d ask you. Couldn’t you go with us, uncle 

“I? No, no, no, no ! I’ve ridden once in a car that 
boy was driving. Never again! But it’s entirely 
proper for you and Barbara to go. Yes, yes. But I 
will not. No, no, no, no F’ 

Nevada flew to the door, and said to the maid: 

“You bet we’ll go. I’ll answer for Miss Barbara. 
Tell the boy to say to Mr. Warren, ‘You bet we’ll go.’ ” 

“Nevada,” called old Jerome, “pardon me, my deary 
but wouldn’t it be as well to send him a note in reply 
Just a line would do.” 

“No, I won’t bother about that,” said Nevada, gayly. 
“Gilbert will understand — he always does. I never 
rode in an automobile in my life; but I’ve paddled a 
canoe down Little Devil River through the Lost Hors^ 


Schools and Schools 61 

Canon, and if it’s any livelier than that I’d like to 
know !” 


Ill 

Two months are supposed to have elapsed. 

Barbara sat in the study of the hundred-thousand- 
dollar house. It was a good place for her. Many places 
are provided in the world where men and women may 
repair for the purpose of extricating themselves from 
divers difficulties. There are cloisters, wailing-places, 
watering-places, confessionals, hermitages, lawyers’ of- 
fices, beauty-parlors, air-ships, and studies; and the 
greatest of these are studies. 

It usually takes a hypotenuse a long time to discover 
that it is the longest side of a triangle. But it’s a long 
line that has no turning. 

Barbara was alone. Uncle Jerome and Nevada had 
gone to the theatre. Barbara had not cared to go. She 
wanted to stay at home and study in the study. If you, 
miss, were a stunning New York girl, and saw every day 
that a brown, ingenuous Western witch was getting 
hobbles and a lasso on the young man you wanted for 
yourself, you, too, would lose taste for the oxidized silver 
setting of a musical comedy. 

Barbara sat by the quartered-oak library table. Her 
right arm rested upon the table, and her dextral fingers 
nervously manipulated a sealed letter. The letter was 
addressed to Nevada Warren ; and in the upper left-hand 
corner of the envelope was Gilbert’s little gold palette. 


tr2! Options 

It had been delivered at nine o’clock, after Nevada had 
left. 

Barbara would have given her pearl necklace to know 
what the letter contained; but she could not open and 
read it by the aid of steam, or a pen-handle, or a hair-pin, 
or any of the generally approved methods, because her 
position in society forbade such an act. She had tried 
to read some of the lines of the letter by holding the 
envelope up to a strong light and pressing it hard 
against the paper, but Gilbert had too good a taste in 
stationery to make that possible. 

At eleven-thirty the theatre-goers returned. It was a 
delicious winter night. Even so far as from the cab to 
the door they were powdered thickly with the big flakes 
downpouring diagonally from the east. Old Jerome 
growled good-naturedly about villainous cab service and 
blockaded streets. Nevada, colored like a rose, with 
sapphire eyes, babbled of the stormy nights in the moun- 
tains around dad’s cabin. During all these wintry 
apostrophes, Barbara, cold at heart, sawed wood — the 
only appropriate thing she could think of to do. 

Old Jerome went immediately upstairs to hot-water- 
bottles and quinine. Nevada fluttered into the study, the 
only cheerfully lighted room, subsided into an armchair, 
and, while at the interminable task of unbuttoning her 
elbow gloves, gave oral testimony as to the demerits of 
the ^‘show.” 

‘‘Yes, I think Mr. Fields is really amusing — some- 
times,” said Barbara. “Here is a letter for you, dear. 


Schools and Schools 


63 


that came by special delivery just after you had gone.’* 

‘Who is it from.^” asked Nevada, tugging at a button. 

“Well, really,” said Barbara, with a smile, “I can 
only guess. The envelope has that queer little thing 
in one corner that Gilbert calls a palette, but which 
looks to me rather like a gilt heart on a schoolgirl’s 
valentine.” 

“I wonder what he’s writing to me about,” remarked 
Nevada, listlessly. 

“We’re all alike,” said Barbara ; “all women. We try 
to find out what is in a letter by studying the postmark. 
As a last resort we use scissors, and read it from the 
bottom upw'ard. Here it is.” 

She made a motion as if to toss the letter across the 
table to Nevada. 

“Great catamounts !” exclaimed Nevada. “These 
centre-fire buttons are a nuisance. I’d rather wear 
buckskins. Oh, Barbara, please shuck the hide off that 
letter and read it. It’ll be midnight before I get these 
gloves off !” 

“Why, dear, you don’t want me to open Gilbert’s 
letter to you.^ It’s for j’ou, and you wouldn’t wish any 
©ne else to read it, of course !” 

Nevada raised her steady, calm, sapphire eyes from 
her gloves. 

“Nobody writes me anything that everybody mightn’t 
read,” she said. “Go on, Barbara. Maybe Gilbert 
wants us to go out in his car again to-morrow.” 

Curiosity can do more things than kill a cat ; and if 


64 Options 

emotions, well recognized as feminine, are inimical to 
feline life, then jealousy would soon leave the whole world 
catless, Barbara opened the letter, with an indulgent, 
slightly bored air. 

^Well, dear,” said she, ^^Pll read it if you want me to,” 

She slit the envelope, and read the missive with swift- 
travelling eyes ; read it again, and cast a quick, shrewd 
glance at Nevada, who, for the time, seemed to consider 
gloves as the world of her interest, and letters from ris- 
ing artists as no more than messages from Mars. 

For a quarter of a minute Barbara looked at Nevada 
with a strange steadfastness ; and then a smile so small 
that it widened her mouth only the sixteenth part of an 
inch, and narrowed her eyes no more than a twentieth 
flashed like an inspired thought across her face. 

Since the beginning no woman has been a mystery to 
another woman. Swift as light travels, each penetrates 
the heart and mind of another, sifts her sister’s words of 
their cunningest disguises, reads her most hidden desires, 
and plucks the sophistry from her wiliest talk like hairs 
from a comb, twiddling them sardonically between her 
thumb and fingers before letting them float away on the 
breezes of fundamental doubt. Long ago Eve’s son rang 
the door-bell of the family residence in Paradise Park, 
bearing a strange lady on his arm, whom he introduced. 
Eve took her daughter-in-law aside and lifted a classic 
eyebrow, 

‘^The Land of Nod,” said the bride, languidly flirting 


Schools and Schools 65 

the leaf of a pahn. suppose you’ve been there, of 
course?” 

^‘Not lately,” laid Eve, absolutely unstaggered. 
‘‘Don’t you think the apple-sauce they serve over there 
is execrable? I rather Hke that mulberry-leaf tunic ef-- 
feet, dear ; but, of course, the real fig goods are not to be 
had over there. Come over behind this lilac-bush while 
the gentlemen split a celery tonic. I think the caterpil- 
lar-holes have made your dress open a little in the back.” 

So, then and there — according to the records — was 
the alliance formed by the only two who’s-who ladies in 
the world. Then it was agreed that women should 
forever remain as clear as a pane of glass — though glass 
was yet to be discovered — to other women, and that she 
should palm herself off on a man as a mystery. 

Barbara seemed to hesitate. 

“Really, Nevada,” she said, with a little show of 
embarrassment, “you shouldn’t have insisted on my 
opening this. I — I’m sure it wasn’t mean for any one 
else to know.” 

Nevada forgot her gloves for a moment. 

“Then read it aloud,” she said. “Since you’ve already 
read it, what’s the difference? If Mr. Warren has written 
to me something that any one else oughtn’t to know, that 
is all the more reason why everybody should know it.” 

“Well,” said Barbara, “this is what it says : ‘Dearest 
Nevada — Come to my studio at twelve o’clock to-night. 
Do not fail.’ ” Barbara rose and dropped the note in 


66 


Options 

Nevada’s lap. “I’m awfully sorry,” she said, “that I 
knew. It isn’t like Gilbert. There must be some mis- 
take. Just consider that I am ignorant of it, will you, 
dear? I must go upstairs now, I have such a headache. 
I’m sure I don’t understand the note. Perhaps Gilbert 
has been dining too well, and will explain. Good night !” 

IV 

Nevada tiptoed to the hall, and heard Barbara’s door 
close upstairs. The bronze clock in the study told the 
hour of twelve was fifteen minutes away. She ran swiftly 
to the front door, and let herself out into the snowstorm. 
Gilbert Warren’s studio was six squares away. 

By aerial ferry the white, silent forces of the storm 
attacked the city from beyond the sullen East River. 
Already the snow lay a foot deep on the pavements, the 
drifts heaping themselves like scaling-ladders against the 
Wdilh of the besieged town. The Avenue was as quiet 
as a street in Pompeii. Cabs now and then skimmed past 
like white-winged gulls over a moonlit ocean ; and less 
frequent motor-cars — sustaining the comparison — 
hissed tlirough the foaming waves like submarine boats 
on their jocund, perilous journeys. 

Nevada plunged like a wind-driven storm-petrel on 
her way. She looked up at the ragged sierras of cloud- 
capped buildings that rose above the streets, shaded by 
the night lights and the congealed vapors to gray, drab, 
ashen, lavender, dun, and cerulean tints. They were so 
like the wintry mountains of her Western home that she 


Schools and Schools 67 

felt a satisfaction such as the hundred-thousand-dollar 
house had seldom brought her. 

A policeman caused her to waver on a corner, just by 
his eye and weight. 

‘‘Hello, Mabel !” said he. “Kind of late for you to be 
out, ain’t it?” 

“I — I am just going to the drug store,” said Nevada, 
hurrying past him. 

The excuse serves as a passport for the most sophisti- 
cated. Does it prove that woman never progresses, or 
that she sprang from Adam’s rib, full-fledged in intellect 
and wiles ? 

Turning eastward, the direct blast cut down Nevada’s 
speed one half. She made zigzag tracks in the snow; 
but she was as tough as a pinon sapling, and bowed to it 
as gracefully. Suddenly the studio-building loomed be- 
fore her, a familiar landmark, like a cliff above some 
well-remembered canon. The haunt of business and its 
hostile neighbor, art, was darkened and silent. The ele- 
vator stopped at ten. 

Up eight flights of Stygian stairs Nevada climbed, and 
rapped firmly at the door numbered “89.” She had been 
there many times before, with Barbara and Uncle Jerome. 

Gilbert opened the door. He had a crayon pencil in 
one hand, a green shade over his eyes, and a pipe in his 
mouth. The pipe dropped to the floor. 

“Am I late?” asked Nevada. “I came as quick as I 
could. Uncle and me were at the theatre this evening. 
Here I am, Gilbert 1” 


68 Options 

Gilbert did a Pygmalion-and-Galatea act. He changed 
from a statue of stupefaction to a young man with a 
problem to tackle. He admitted Nevada, got a whisk- 
broom, and began to brush the snow from her clothes. A 
great lamp, with a green shade, hung over an easel, where 
the artist had been sketching in crayon. 

^‘You wanted me,” said Nevada simply, ^‘and I came. 
You said so in your letter. What did you send for me 
for.?*” 

“You read my letter.?*” inquired Gilbert, sparring for 
wind. 

“Barbara read it to me. I saw it afterward. It said: 
‘Come to my studio at twelve to-night, and do not fail.’ 
I thought you were sick, of course, but you don’t seem 
to be.” 

“Aha !” said Gilbert, irrelevantly. “I’ll tell you why 
I asked you to come, Nevada. I want you to marry me 
immediately — to-night. What’s a little snowstorm? 
Will you do it.?*” 

“You might have noticed that I would, long ago,” 
said Nevada. “And I’m rather stuck on the snowstorm 
idea, myself. I surely would hate one of these flowery 
church noon-weddings. Gilbert, I didn’t know you 
had grit enough to propose it this way. Let’s shock 
’em — it’s our funeral, ain’t it?” 

“You bet!” said Gilbert. “Where did I hear that 
expression?” he added to himself. “Wait a minute, 
Nevada ; I want to do a little ’phoning.” 

He shut himself in a little dressing-room, and called 


Schools and Schools 69 

upon the lightnings of the heavens — condensed into 
unromantic numbers and districts. 

^^That you, Jack? You confounded sleepy-head! 
Yes, wake up ; this is me — or I — oh, bother the differ- 
ence in grammar ! I’m going to be married right away. 
Yes! Wake up your sister — don’t answer me back; 
bring her along, too — you must. Remind Agnes of the 
time I saved her from drowning in Lake Ronkonkoma — 
I know it’s caddish to refer to it, but she must come with 
you. Yes! Nevada is here, waiting. We’ve been 
engaged quite a while. Some opposition among the 
relatives, you know, and we have to pull it off this way. 
We’re waiting here for you. Don’t let Agnes out-talk 
you — bring her! You will? Good old boy! I’ll or- 
der a carriage to call for you, double-quick time. Con- 
found you. Jack, you’re all right !” 

Gilbert returned to the room where Nevada waited. 

^‘My old friend. Jack Peyton, and his sister were to 
have been here at a quarter to twelve,” he explained; 
^‘but Jack is so confoundedly slow. I’ve just ’phoned 
them to hurry. They’ll be here in a few minutes. I’m 
the happiest man in the world, Nevada ! What did you 
do with the letter I sent you to-day?” 

«I’ve got it cinched here,” said Nevada, pulling it out 
from beneath her opera-cloak. 

Gilbert drew the letter from the envelope and looked it 
over carefully. Then he looked at Nevada thoughtfully. 

‘‘Didn’t you think it rather queer that I should ask 
you to come to my studio at midnight?” he asked. 


70 Options 

‘‘Why, no,” said Nevada, rounding her eyes. “Not 
if you needed me. Out West, when a pal sends you a 
hurry call — ain’t that what you say here.^ — we get 
there first and talk about it after the row is over. And 
it’s usually snowing there, too, when things happen. So 
I didn’t mind.” 

Gilbert rushed into another room, and came back 
burdened with overcoats warranted to turn wind, rain, 
or snow. 

“Put this raincoat on,” he said, holding it for her. 
“We have a quarter of a mile to go. Old Jack and his 
sister will be here in a few minutes.” He began to 
struggle into a heavy coat. “Oh, Nevada,” he said, 
“just look at the headlines on the front page of that 
evening paper on the table, will you? It’s about your 
section of the West, and I know it will interest you.” 

He waited a full minute, pretending to find trouble in 
the getting on of his overcoat, and then turned. Nevada 
had not moved. She w^as looking at him with strange 
and pensive directness. Her cheeks had a flush on them 
beyond the color that had been contributed by the wind 
and snow ; but her eyes were steady. 

“I was going to tell you,” she said, “anyhow, before 
you — before we — before — well, before anything. Dad 
never gave me a day of schooling. I never learned to 
read or write a darned word. Now if ” 

Pounding their uncertain way upstairs, the feet of 
Jack, the somnolent, and Agnes, the grateful, were 
heard. 


Schools and Schools 


n 


V 


When Mr. and Mrs. Gilbert Warren were spinning 
softly homeward in a closed carriage, after the cere- 
mony, Gilbert said : 

‘‘Nevada, would you really like to know what I wrote 
you in the letter that you received to-night?’’ 

“Fire away !” said his bride. 

“Word for word,” said Gilbert, “it was this: ‘My 
dear Miss Warren — You were right about the flower. 
It was a hydrangea, and not a lilac.’” 

“All right,” said Nevada. “But let’s forget it. The 
joke’s on Barbara, anyway !” 


THIMBLE, THIMBLE 

These are the directions for finding the office of Car- 
teret & Carteret, Mill Supplies and Leather Belting: 

You follow the Broadway trail down until you pass 
the Crosstown Line, the Bread Line, and the Dead Line, 
and come to the Big Canons of the Moneygrubber Tribe. 
Then you turn to the left, to the right, dodge a push-cart 
and the tongue of a two-ton four-horse dray, and hop, 
skip, and jump to a granite ledge on the side of a twenty- 
one-story synthetic mountain of stone and iron. In the 
twelfth story is the office of Carteret & Carteret. The 
factory where they make the mill supplies and leather 
belting is in Brooklyn. Those commodities — to say 
nothing of Brooklyn — not being of interest to you, let 
us hold the incidents within the confines of a one-act, one- 
scene play, thereby lessening the toil of the reader and 
the expenditure of the publisher. So, if you have the 
courage to face four pages of type and Carteret & Car- 
teret’s office boy, Percival, you shall sit on a varnished 
chair in the inner office and peep at the little comedy of 
the Old Nigger Man, the Hunting-Case Watch, and the 
Open-Faced Question — mostly borrowed from the late 
Mr. Frank Stockton, as you will conclude. 

First, biography (but pared to the quick) must inter- 
72 


Thimble, Thimble 73 

vene. I am for the inverted sugar-coated quinine pill — 
the bitter on the outside. 

The Carterets were, or was (Columbia College pro- 
fessors please rule), an old Virginia family. Long time 
ago the gentlemen of the family had worn lace ruffles 
and carried tinless foils and owned plantations and had 
slaves to burn. But the war had greatly reduced their 
holdings. ( Of course you can perceive at once that this 
flavor has been shoplifted from Mr. F. Hopkinson Smith, 
in spite of the ‘^et” after ^^Carter.”) Well, anyhow: 

In digging up the Carteret history I shall not take you 
farther back than the year 16S0. The two original 
American Carterets came over in that year, but by differ- 
ent means of transportation. One brother, named John, 
came in the May^ower and became a Pilgrim Father. 
You’ve seen his picture on the covers of the Thanksgiving 
magazines, hunting turkeys in the deep snow with a 
blunderbuss. Blandford Carteret, the other brother, 
crossed the pond in his own brigantine, landed on the 
Virginia coast, and became an F. F. V. John became 
distinguished for piety and shrewdness in business; 
Blandford for his pride, juleps, marksmanship, and vast 
slave-cultivated plantations. 

Then came the Civil War. (I must condense this 
historical interpolation.) Stonewall Jackson was shot; 
Lee surrendered; Grant toured the world; cotton went 
to nine cents; Old Crow whiskey and Jim Crow cars 
were invented; the Seventy-ninth Massachusetts Volun- 
jteers returned to the Ninety-seventh Alabama Zouaves 


74 Options 

the battle flag of Lundy’s Lane which they bought at a 
second-hand store in Chelsea, kept by a man named 
Skzchnzski ; Georgia sent the President a sixty-pound 
watermelon — and that brings us up to the time when 
the story begins. My! but that w'as sparring for an 
opening! I really must brush up on my Aristotle. 

The Yankee Carterets went into business in New York 
long before the war. Their house, as far as Leather 
Belting and Mill Supplies was concerned, was as musty 
and arrogant and solid as one of those old East India 
tea-importing concerns that you read about in Dickens. 
Tliere were some rumors of a war behind its counters, 
but not enough to affect the business. 

During and after the w^ar, Blandford Carteret, F. F. 
V., lost his plantations, juleps, marksmanship, and life. 
He bequeathed little more than his pride to his surviving 
famll}". So it came to pass that Blandford Carteret, the 
Fifth, aged fifteen, was invited by the Icatber-and-mill- 
supplies branch of that name to come North and learn 
business instead of hunting foxes and boasting of the 
glory of his fathers on the reduced acres of his impover- 
ished family. The boy jumped at the chance; and, at 
the ago of twenty-fiw, sat in the office of the firm equal 
partner with John, the Fifth, of the blundei'buss-and- 
turkey branch. Here the story begins again. 

The young men w^ere about the same age, smooth of 
face, alert, easy of manner, and with an air that promised 
mental and physical quickness. They were razored, 
blue-sergedL^ straw-hatted, and pearl stiek-pinned like 


Thimble, Thimble 75 

other young New Yorkers who might be millionaires 
or bill clerks. 

One afternoon at four o’clock, in the private office of 
the firm, Blaiulford Carteret opened a letter that a clerk 
had just brought to his desk. After reading it, he 
chuckled audibly for nearly a minute. John looked 
around from his desk inquiringly. 

^^It’s from mother,” said Blandford. ^^I’ll read you 
the funny part of it. She tells me all the neighborhood 
news first, of course, and then cautions me against get- 
ting my feet wet and musical comedies. After that 
come vital statistics about calves and pigs and an esti- 
mate of the wheat crop. And now^ I’ll quote some: 

‘And what do you think! Old Uncle Jake, who was 
seventy-six last Wednesday, must go travelling. Noth- 
ing w^ould do but he must go to New York and see his 
“young Marster Blandford.” Old as he is, he has a 
deal of common sense, so I’ve let him go. I couldn’t 
refuse him — he seemed to have concentrated all his hopes 
and desires into this one adventure into the wdde world. 
You kpow he w^as born on the plantation, and has never 
been ten miles away from it in his life. And he was 
j^our father’s body servant during the war, and has been 
ahva3^s a faithful vassal and servant of the famil3\ He 
has often seen the gold w atch — the watch that w^as your 
father’s and 3^our father’s father’s. I told him it w'as to 
be yours, and he begged me to allow him to take it to you 
and to put it into your hands himself. 

“ ‘So he has it, carefully enclosed in a buckskin case, 


76 Options 

and is bringing it to you with all the pride and impor- 
tance of a king’s messenger. I gave him money for the 
round trip and for a two weeks’ stay in the city, I wish 
you would see to it that he gets comfortable quarters — 
Jake won’t need much looking after — he’s able to take 
care of himself. But I have read in the papers that 
African bishops and colored potentates generally have 
much trouble in obtaining food and lodging in the Yankee 
metropolis. Tliat may be all right ; but I don’t see why 
the best hotel there shouldn’t take Jake in. Still, I 
suppose it’s a rule. 

‘I gave him full directions about finding you, and 
packed his valise myself. You won’t have to bother with 
him ; but I do hope you’ll see that he is made comfortable. 
Take the watch that he brings you — it’s almost a decor- 
ation. It has been w'orn by true Carterets, and there 
isn’t a stain upon it nor a false movement of the wheels. 
Bringing it to you is the crowning joy of old Jake’s 
life. I wanted him to have that little outing and that 
happiness before it is too late. You have often heard 
us talk about how Jake, pretty badly wounded himself, 
crawled through the reddened grass at Chancellorsville 
to where your father lay with the bullet in his dear 
heart, and took the watch from his pocket to keep it 
from the Yanks.” 

‘So, my son, when the old man comes consider him 
as a frail but worthy messenger from the old-time life 
and home. 

‘You have been so long away from home and so long 


77 


Thimble, Thimble 

► 

among the people that we have always regarded as aliens 
that I’m not sure that Jake will know you when he sees 
you. But Jake has a keen perception, and I rather be- 
lieve that he will know a Virginia Carteret at sight. I 
can’t conceive that even ten years in Yankeeland could 
change a boy of mine. Anyhow, I’m sure you will know 
Jake. I put eighteen collars in his valise. If he should 
have to buy others, he wears a number 15^^. Please 
see that he gets the right oUes. He will be no trouble 
to you at all, 

‘If you are not too busy, I’d like for you to find him 
a place to board where they have white-meal corn-bread, 
and try to keep him from taking his shoes off in your 
office or on the street. His right foot swells a little, and 
he likes to be comfortable. 

“ ‘If you can spare the time, count his handkerchiefs 
when they come back from the wash. I bought him a 
dozen new ones before he left. He should be there about 
the time this letter reaches you, I told him to go 
straight to your office when he arrives.’ ” 

As soon as Blandford had finished the reading of this, 
something happened (as there should happen in stories 
and must happen on the stage). 

Percival, the office boy, with his air of despising the 
world’s output of mill supplies and leather belting, came 
in to announce that a colored gentleman was outside to 
see Mr. Blandford Carteret. 

“Bring him in,” said Blandford, rising. 

John Carteret swung around in his chair and said to 


78 Options 

Percival: ^^Ask him to wait a few minutes outside. 
We’ll let you know when to bring him in.” 

Then he turned to his cousin with one of those broad, 
slow smiles that was an inheritance of all the Carterets, 
and said : 

^‘Bland, I’ve always had a consuming curiosity to 
understand the differences that you haughty Southerners 
believe to exist between ‘you all’ and the people of the 
North. Of course, I know that you consider yourselves 
made out of finer clay and look upon Adam as only a 
collateral branch of/your ancestry; but I don’t know 
why. I never could understand the differences between 
us” 

“Well, John,” said Blandford, laughing, “what you 
don’t understand about it is just the difference, of course. 
I suppose it was the feudal way in which we lived that 
gave us our lordly baronial airs and feeling of superior- 
ity.” 

“But you are not feudal, now,” went on John. “Since 
we licked you and stole your cotton and mules you’ve 
had to go to work just as we ‘damyankees,’ as you call 
us, have always been doing. And you’re just as proud 
and exclusive and upper-classy as you were before the 
war. So it wasn’t your money that caused it.” 

“Maybe it was the climate,” said Blandford, lightly, 
“or maybe our negroes spoiled us. I’ll call old Jake in, 
now. I’ll be glad to see the old villain again.” 

“Wait just a moment,” said John. “I’ve got a little 
theory I want to test. You and I are pretty much alike 


79 


Thimhle, Thimble 

in our general appearance. Old Jake hasn’t seen you 
since you were fifteen. Let’s have him in and play fair 
and see which of us gets the watch. The old darky surely 
ouglit to be able to pick out his ^young marster’ without 
any trouble. The alleged aristocratic superiority of a 
‘reb’ ought to be visible to him at once. He couldn’t 
make the mistake of handing over the timepiece to a 
Yankee, of course. The loser buys the dinner this even- 
ing and two dozen 15/^ collars for Jake. Is it a go?” 

Blandford agreed heartily. Percival was summoned, 
and told to usher the ‘^colored gentleman” in. 

Uncle Jake stepped inside the private office cautiously. 
He was a little old man, as black as soot, wrinkled and 
bald except for a fringe of white wool, cut decorously 
short, that ran over his ears and around his head. There 
was nothing of the stage ‘^uncle” about him: his black 
suit nearly fitted him ; his shoes shone, and his straw hat 
was banded with a gaudy ribbon. In his right hand he 
carried something carefully concealed by his closed 
fingers. 

Uncle Jake stopped a few steps from the door. Two 
young men sat in their revolving desk-chairs ten feet 
apart and looked at him in friendly silence. His gaze 
slowly shifted manj^ times from one to the other. He 
felt sure that he was in the presence of one, at least, of 
the revered family among whose fortunes his life had 
begun and was to end. 

One had the pleasing but haughty Carteret air; the 
other had the unmistakable straight, long family noise. 


80 Options 

Both had the keen black ej^es, horizontal browjs, and thin, 
smiling lips that had distinguished both the Carteret of 
the Mayflower and him of the brigantine. Old Jake had 
thought that he could have picked out his young master 
instantly from a thousand Northerners; but he found 
himself in difficulties. The best he could do was to use 
strategy. 

“Howdy, Marse Blandford — howdy, suh?” he said, 
looking midway between the young men. 

“Howdy, Uncle Jake?’^ they both answered pleasantly 
and in unison. “Sit down. Have you brought the 
w^atch?’’ 

Uncle Jake chose a hard-bottom chair at a respectful 
distance, sat on the edge of it, and laid his hat carefully 
on the floor. The watch in its buckskin case he gripped 
tightly. He had not risked his life on the battlefield 
to rescue that watch from his “old marster’s” foes to 
hand it over again to the enemy without a struggle. 

“Yes, suh ; I got it in my hand, suh. I’m g^vine give 
it to you right away in jus’ a minute. Old Missus told 
me to put it in young Marse Blandford’s hand and tell 
him to wear it for the family pride and honor. It was 
a mighty longsome trip for an old nigger man to make — 
ten thousand miles, it must be, back to old Vi’ginia, suh. 
You’ve growed mightily, young marster. I wouldn’t 
have reconnized you but for yo’ powerful resemblance 
to the old marster.” 

With admirable diplomacy the old man kept his eyes 
roaming in the space between the two men. His words 


81 


Thimble, Thimble 

might have been addressed to either. Though neither 
wicked nor perverse, he was seeking for a sign. 

Blandford and John exchanged winks. 

‘T reckon you done got you ma’s letter,’’ went on 
Uncle Jake. ‘^She said she was gwine to write to you 
’bout my cornin’ along up this er-way.” 

‘‘Yes, yes. Uncle Jake,” said John briskly. “My 
cousin and I have just been notified to expect you. We 
are both Carterets, you know.” 

“Although one of us,” said Blandford, “was bom and 
raised in the North.” 

“So if you will hand over the watch ” said John. 

“My cousin and I ” said Blandford. 

“Will then see to it ” said John. 

“That comfortable quarters are found for you,” said 
Blandford. 

With creditable ingenuity, old Jake set up a cackling, 
high-pitched, protracted laugh. He beat his knee, picked 
up his hat and bent the brim in an apparent paroxysm 
of humorous appreciation. The seizure afforded him a 
mask behind which he could roll his eye impartially 
between, above, and beyond his two tormentors. 

“I sees what !” he chuckled, after a while. “You 
gen’Iemen is tryin’ to have fun with the po’ old nigger. 
But you can’t fool old Jake. I knowed you, Marse 
Blandford, the minute I sot eyes on you. You was a 
po’ skimpy little boy no mo’ than about fo’teen when you 
lef’ home to come No’th; but I knowed you the minute 
I sot eyes on you. You is the mawtal image of old mars- 


I 


82 Options 

ter. The other gen’leman resembles you mightily, suh ; 
but you can’t fool old Jake on a member of the old 
Vi’ginia family. No suh.” 

At exactly the same time both Carterets smiled and 
extended a hand for the watch. 

Uncle Jake’s wrinkled, black face lost the expression 
of amusement into which he had vainly twisted it. He 
knew that he was being teased, and that it made little 
real difference, as far as its safety went, into which of 
those outstretched hands he placed the family treasure. 
But it seemed to him that not only his own pride and 
loyalty but much of the Virginia Carterets’ was at stake. 
He had heard down South during the war about that 
other branch of the family that lived in the North and 
fought on ‘‘the yuther side,” and it had always grieveci 
him. He had followed his “old marster’s ” fortunes from 
stately luxury through war to almost poverty. And 
now, with the last relic and reminder of him, blessed by 
“old missus,” and entrusted implicitly to his care, he had 
come ten thousand miles (as it seemed) to deliver it into 
the hands of the one who was to wear it and wind it and 
cherish it and listen to it tick off the unsullied hours 
that marked the lives of the Carterets — of Virginia. 

His experience and conception of the Yankees had 
been an impression of tyrants — “low-down, common 
trash” — in blue, laying waste with fire and sword. He 
had seen the smoke of many burning homesteads almost 
as grand as Carteret Hall ascending to the drowsy 
Southern skies. And now he was face to face with one of 


Thimble^ Thimble 83 

them — and he could not distinguish him from his 
‘^joung marster” whom he had come to find and bestow 
upon him the emblem of his kingship — even as the arm 
‘^clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful” laid Ex- 
calibur in the right hand of Arthur. He saw before him 
two young men, easy, kind, courteous, welcoming, either 
of whom might have been the one he sought. Troubled, 
bewildered, sorely grieved at his weakness of judgment, 
old Jake abandoned his loyal subterfuges. His right 
hand sweated against the buckskin cover of the watch. 
He was deeply humiliated and chastened. Seriously, 
now, his prominent, yellow-white eyes closely scanned the 
two young men. At the end of his scrutiny he was con- 
scious of but one difference between them. One wore a 
narrow black tie with a white pearl stickpin. The 
other’s ‘‘four-hand” was a narrow blue one pinned with 
a black pearl. 

And then, to old Jake’s relief, there came a sudden 
distraction. Drama knocked at the door with imperious 
knuckles, and forced Comedy to the wings, and Drama 
peeped with a smiling but set face over the footlights. 

Percival, the hater of mill supplies, brought in a 
card, which he handed, with the manner of one bearing 
a cartel, to Blue-Tie. 

“Olivia De Ormond,” read Blue-Tie from the card. 
He looked inquiringly at his cousin. 

“Why not have her in,” said Black-Tie, “and bring 
matters to a conclusion?” 

“Uncle Jake,” said one of the young men, “would you 


84 OptioTis 

mind taking that chair over there in the corner for a 
while? A lady is coming in — on some business. We*ll 
take up your case afterward.” 

The lady whom Percival ushered in w^as young and 
petulantly, decidedly, freshly, consciously, and intention- 
ally pretty. She was dressed with such expensive plain- 
ness that she made you consider lace and ruffles as mere 
tatters and rags. But one great ostrich plume that she 
wore would have marked her anywhere in the army of 
beauty as the wearer of the merry helmet of Navarre. 

Miss De Ormond accepted the swivel chair at Blue- 
Tie’s desk. Then the gentlemen drew leather-uphol- 
stered seats conveniently near, and spoke of the weather. 

‘‘Yes,” said she, “I noticed it was warmer. But I 
mustn’t take up too much of your time during business 
hours. That is,” she continued, “unless we talk busi- 
ness.” 

She addressed her words to Blue-Tie, with a charming 
smile. 

“Very well,” said he. “You don’t mind my cousin 
being present, do you? We are generally rather confi- 
dential with each other — especially in business matters.” 

“Oh, no,” carolled Miss De Ormond. “I’d rather he 
did hear. He knows all about it, anyhow. In fact, he’s 
quite a material witness because he was present when 
you — when it happened. I thought you miglit want to 
talk things over before — well, before any action is 
taken, as I believe the lawyers say.” 

“Have you an3^thing in the way of a proposition to 
make?” asked Black-Tie. 


Thimblej Thimble 85 

Miss De Ormond looked reflectively at the neat toe of 
one of her dull kid pumps. 

‘‘I had a proposal made to me,” she said. ‘^If the 
proposal sticks it cuts out the proposition. Let’s have 
that settled first.” 

^‘Well, as far as ” began Blue-Tie. 

‘‘Excuse me, cousin,” interrupted Black-Tie, “if you 
don’t mind my cutting in.” And then he turned, with a 
good-natured air, toward the lady. 

“Now, let’s recapitulate a bit,” he said cheerfully. 
“All three of us, besides other mutual acquaintances, 
have been out on a good many larks together.” 

“I’m afraid I’ll have to call the birds by another 
name,” said Miss De Ormond. 

“All right,” responded Black-Tie, with unimpaired 
cheerfulness ; “suppose we say ‘squabs’ when we talk 
about the ‘proposal’ and ‘larks’ when we discuss the 
‘proposition.’ You have a quick mind. Miss De Or- 
mond. Two months ago some half-dozen of us went in 
a motor-car for a day’s run into the country. We 
stopped at a road-house for dinner. My cousin pro- 
posed marriage to you then and there. He was influ- 
enced to do so, of course, by the beauty and charm which 
no one can deny that you possess.” 

“I wish I had you for a press agent, Mr. Carteret,” 
said the beauty, with a dazzling smile. 

“You are on the stage. Miss De Ormond,” went on 
Black-Tie. “You have had, doubtless, many admirers, 
and perhaps other proposals. You must remember, too, 
that we were a party of merrymakers on that occasion 


86 Options 

There were a good many corks pulled. That the pro- 
posal of marriage was made to you by my cousin we can- 
not deny. But hasn’t it been your experience that, by 
common consent, such things lose their seriousness when 
viewed in the next day’s sunlight.^ Isn’t there some- 
thing of a ‘code’ among good ‘sports’ — I use the word 
in its best sense — that wipes out each day the follies 
of the evening previous ?” 

“Oh, yes,” said Miss De Ormond. “I know that very 
well. And I’ve always played up to it. But as you 
seem to be conducting the case — with the silent consent 
of the defendant — I’ll tell you something more. I’ve 
got letters from him repeating the proposal. And 
they’re signed, too.” 

“I understand,” said Black-Tie gravely. “What’s 
your price for the letters.^” 

“I’m not a cheap one,” said Miss De Ormond. “But 
I had decided to make you a rate. You both belong to 
a swell family. Well, if I am on the stage nobody can 
say a word against me truthfully. And the money is 
only a secondary consideration. It isn’t the money I 
was after. I — I believed him — and — and I liked him.” 

She cast a soft, entrancing glance at Blue-Tie from 
under her long eyelashes. 

“And the price went on Black-Tie, inexorably. 

“Ten thousand dollars,” said the lady, sweetly. 

“Or ” 

“Or the fulfilment of the engagement to marry.” 

“I think it is time,” interrupted Blue-Tie, “for me to 


87 


Thimble, Thimble 

be allowed to saj a word or two. You and I, cousin, 
belong to a family that has held its head pretty high. 
You have been brought up in a section of the country 
very different from the one where our branch of the fam- 
ily lived. Yet both of us are Carterets, even if some of 
our ways and theories differ. You remember, it is a 
tradition of the family, that no Carteret ever failed in 
chivalry to a lady or failed to keep his word when it was 
given.” 

Then Blue-Tie, with frank decision showing on his 
countenance, turned to Miss De Ormond. 

‘‘Olivia,” said he, “on what date ’will you marry me?” 

Before she could answer, Black-Tie again interposed. 

“It is a long journey,” said he, “from Plymouth Rock 
to Norfolk Bay. Between the two points we find the 
changes that nearly three centuries have brought. In 
that time the old order has changed. We no longer burn 
witches or torture slaves. And to-day w^e neither spread 
our cloaks on the mud for ladies to walk over nor treat 
them to the ducking-stool. It is the age of common 
sense, adjustment, and proportion. All of us — ladies, 
gentlemen, women, men. Northerners, Southerners, lords, 
caitiffs, actors, hardware-drummers, senators, hod-car- 
riers and politicians — are coming to a better under- 
standing. Chivalry is one of our words that changes 
its meaning every day. Family pride is a thing of many 
constructions — it may show itself by maintaining a 
moth-eaten arrogance in a cobwebbed Colonial mansion 
or by the prompt paying of one’s debts. 


88 Options 

^^Now, I suppose you’ve had enough of my monologue. 
I’ve learned something of business and a little of life ; and 
I somehow believe, cousin, that our great-grand-grand- 
fathers, the original Carterets, would endorse my view 
of this matter.” 

Black-Tie wheeled around to his desk, wrote in a check- 
book and tore out the check, the sharp rasp of the perfo- 
rated leaf making the only sound in the room. He laid 
the check within easy reach of Miss De Ormond’s hand. 

^^Business is business,” said he. ^‘We live in a business 
age. There is my personal check for $10,000. What 
do you say, Miss De Ormond — will it be orange blos- 
soms or cash.?” 

Miss De Ormond picked up the check carelessly, folded 
it indifferently, and stuffed it into her glove. 

^‘Oh, this’ll do,” she said, calmly. “I just thought 
I’d call and put it up to you. I guess you people are 
all right. But a girl has feelings, you know. I’ve heard 
one of you was a Southerner — I wonder which one of 
you it is?” 

She arose, smiled sweetly, and walked to the door. 
There, with a flash of white teeth and a dip of the heavy 
plume, she disappeared. 

Both of the cousins had forgotten Uncle Jake for the 
time. But now they heard the shuffling of his shoes as 
he came across the rug toward them from his seab in the 
corner. 

“Young mars ter,” he said, “take yo’ watch.” 

And without hesitation he laid the ancient timepiece 
in the hand of its rightful owner. 


SUPPLY AND DEMAND 


Finch keeps a hats-cleaned-by-electricity-while-you- 
wait establishment, nine feet by twelve, in Third Avenue. 
Once a customer, you are always his. I do not know his 
secret process, but every four days your hat needs to be 
cleaned again. 

Finch is a leathern, sallow, slow-footed man, between 
twenty and forty. You would say he had been brought 
up a bushelman in Essex Street. When business is slack 
he likes to talk, so I had my hat cleaned even oftener 
than it deserved, hoping Finch might let me into some 
of the secrets of the sweatsliops. 

One afternoon I dropped in and found Finch alone. He 
began to anoint my headpiece de Panama with his mys- 
terious fluid that attracted dust and dirt like a magnet. 

^^They say the Indians weave ’em under water,” said 
I, for a leader. 

‘‘Don’t you believe it,” said Finch. “No Indian or 
white man could stay under water that long. Say, do 
you pay much attention to politics.?^ I see in the paper 
something about a law they’ve passed called ‘the law of 
supply and demand.”’ 

I explained to him as well as I could that the reference 
was to a politico-economical law, and not to a legal 
statute. 


89 


90 Options 

‘‘I didn’t know,” said Finch. ‘‘I heard a good dea^ 
about it a year or so ago, but in a one-sided way.” 

^^Yes,” said I, ^^political orators use it a great deal. 
In fact, they never give it a rest. I suppose you heard 
some of those cart-tail fellows spouting on the subject 
over here on the east side.” 

‘‘I heard it from a king,” said Finch — ‘‘the white 
king of a tribe of Indians in South America.” 

I was interested but not surprised. The big city is 
like a mother’s knee to many who have straj^ed far and 
found the roads rough beneath their uncertain feet. At 
dusk they come home and sit upon the door-step. I 
know a piano player in a cheap cafe who has shot lions in 
Africa, a bell-boy who fought in the British army against 
the Zulus, an express-driver whose left arm had been 
cracked like a lobster’s claw for a stew-pot of Patagonian 
cannibals when the boat of his rescuers hove in sight. 
So a hat-cleaner who has been a friend of a king did 
not oppress me. 

“A new band.^” asked Finch, with his dry, barren 
smile. 

“Yes,” said I, “and half an inch wider.” I had had 
a new band five days before. 

“I meets a man one night,” said Finch, beginning his 
story — “a man brown as snuff, with money in every 
pocket, eating schweinerknuckel in Schlagel’s. That was 
two years ago, when I was a hose-cart driver for No. 98. 
His discourse runs to the subject of gold. He says that 
certain mountains in a country down South that he calls 


Supply and Demand 91 

Gaudymala is full of it. He says the Indians wash it 
out of the streams in plural quantities. 

‘Oh, Geronimo !’ says I. ‘Indians ! There’s no In- 
dians in the South,’ I tell him, ‘except Elks, Maccabees, 
and the buyers for the fall dry-goods trade. The In- 
dians are all on the reservations,’ says 1. 

“ ‘I’m telling 3 ^ou this with reservations,’ says he. 
‘They ain’t Buffalo Bill Indians; they’re squattier and 
more pedigreed. They call ’em Inkers and Aspics, and 
they was old inhabitants when Mazuma was king of 
Mexico. They wash the gold out of the mountain 
streams,’ says the brown man, ‘and fill quills with it ; 
and then they empty ’em into red jars till they are full ; 
and then they pack it in buckskin sacks of one arroba 
each — an arroba is twenty-five pounds — and store it 
in a stone house, with an engraving of a idol with mar- 
celled hair, playing a flute, over the door.’ 

“‘How do they w^ork off this unearth increment.^’ I 
asks. 

“ ‘They don’t,’ says the man. ‘It’s a case of “111 fares 
the land with the great deal of velocity 'where wealth 
accumulates and there ain’t any reciprocity.” 

“After this man and me got througli our conversation, 
wdiich left him dry of Information, I shook hands with 
him and told liim I was sorry I couldn’t believe him. And 
a month afterward I landed on the coast of this Guady- 
mala with $1,S00 that I had been saving up for five years. 
I thought I knew what Indians liked, and I fixed myself 
accordingly. I loaded down four pack-mules with red 


92 Options 

woollen blankets, wrought-iron pails, jewelled side-combs 
for the ladies, glass necklaces, and safety-razors. I 
hired a black mozo, who was supposed to be a mule- 
driver and an interpreter too. It turned out that he 
could interpret mules all right, but he drove the English 
language much too hard. His name sounded like a 
Yale key when you push it in wrong side up, but I called 
him McClintock, which was close to the noise. 

‘‘Well, this gold village was forty miles up in the 
mountains, and it took us nine days to find it. But one 
afternoon McClintock led the other mules and lUyself 
over a rawhide bridge stretched across a precipice five 
thousand feet deep, it seemed to me. The hoofs of the 
beasts drummed on it just like before George M. Cohan 
makes his first entrance on the stage. 

“This village was built of mud and stone, and had no 
streets. Some few yellow-and-brown persons popped 
their heads out-of-doors, looking about like Welsh rab- 
bits with Worcester sauce on ’em. Out of the biggest 
house, that had a kind of a porch around it, steps a big 
white man, red as a beet in color, dressed in fine tanned 
deerskin clothes, with a gold chain around his neck, smok- 
ing a cigar. I’ve seen United States Senators of his 
style of features and build, also head-waiters and cops. 

“He walks up and takes a look at us, while McClin- 
tock disembarks and begins to interpret to the lead mule 
while he smokes a cigarette. 

“ ‘Hello, Buttinsky,’ says the fine man to me. ‘How 


Supply and Demand 93 

did you get in the game ? I didn’t see you buy any chips. 
Who gave you the keys of the city.?^” 

‘I’m a poor traveller,’ says I. ‘Especially mule- 
back. You’ll excuse me. Do you run a hack line or 
only a bluff.?’ 

‘“Segregate yourself from your pseudo-equine quad- 
ruped,’ says he, ‘and come inside.’ 

“He raises a finger, and a villager runs up. 

“ ‘This man will take care of your outfit,’ says he, ‘and 
I’ll take care of you.’ 

“He leads me into the biggest house, and sets out the 
chairs and a kind of a drink the color of milk. It was 
the finest room I ever saw. The stone walls was hung all 
over with silk shawls, and there was red and yellow rugs 
on the floor, and jars of red pottery and Angora goat 
skins, and enough bamboo furniture to misfurnish half 
a dozen seaside cottages. 

“ ‘In the first place,’ says the man, ‘you want to know 
who I am. I’m sole lessee and proprietor of this tribe of 
Indians. They call me the Grand Yacuma, which is to 
say King or Main Finger of the bunch. I’ve got more 
power here than a charge d’afiTaires, a charge of dyna- 
mite, and a charge account at Tiffany’s combined. In 
fact, I’m the Big Stick, with as many extra knots on it 
as there is on the record run of the Lusitania, Oh, I 
read the papers now and then,’ says he. ‘Now, let’s 
hear your entitlements,’ he goes on, ‘and the meeting will 
be open.’ 

“‘Well,’ says T, ‘I am known as one W. D, Finch. 


94 Options 

Occupation, capitali;:jt. Adress, 541 East Thirty- 
second — — ’ 

^^New York,’ chips in the Noble Grand. T know,’ 
says he, grinning. Tt ain’t the first time you’ve seen it 
go down on the blotter. I can tell by the way jou hand 
it out. Well, explain ^‘capitalist.” ’ 

“I tells this boss plain what I come for and how I 
come to came. 

“‘Gold-dust?’ says he, looking as puzzled as a baby 
that got a feather stuck on its molasses finger. ‘That’s 
funny. This ain’t a gold-mining country. And you 
invested all your capital on a stranger’s story? Well, 
well ! These Indians of mine — they are the last of the 
tribe of Peches — are simple as children. They know 
nothing of the purchasing power of gold. I’m afraid 
you’ve been imposed on,’ says he. 

“ ‘Maybe so,’ says I, ‘but it sounded pretty straight 
to me.’ 

“ ‘W. D.,’ says the King, all of a sudden, ‘I’ll give you 
a square deal. It ain’t often I get to talk to a white 
man, and I’ll give you a show for your money. It may 
be these constituents of mine have a few grains of gold- 
dust hid away in their clothes. To-morrow you may 
get out these goods you’ve brought up and see if you can 
make any sales. Now, I’m going to introduce myself 
unofBcially. My name is Shane — Patrick Shane. I 
own this tribe of Peche Indians by right of conquest — 
single handed and unafraid. I drifted up here four 
years ago, and won ’em by my size and complexion and 


95 


Supply and Demand 

nerve. I learned their language in six weeks — it’s easy : 
you simply emit a string of colisonants as long as your 
breath holds out and then point at what you’re asking 
for. 

conquered ’em, spectacularly,’ goes on King 
Shane, ^and then I went at ’em with economical politics, 
law, sleight-of-hand, and a kind of New England ethics 
and parsimony. Every Sunday, or as near as I can 
guess at it, I preach to ’em in the council-house (I’m the 
council) on the law of supply and demand. I praise 
supply and knock demand. I use the same text everj^ 
time. You wouldn’t think, W. D.,’ says Shane, Hhat 
I had poetry in me, would you.^’ 

‘^^Well,’ says I, ‘I wouldn’t know whether to call it 
poetry or not.’ 

^Tennyson,’ says Shane, ^furnishes the poetic gospel 
I preach. I always considered him the boss poet, 
Here’s the w^ay the text goes: 

“For, not to adraire, if a man could learn it, v/ere more 
Than to walk all day like a Sultan of old in a garden of spice.” 

“^You see, I teach ’em to cut out demand — that 
supply is the main thing. I teach ’em not to desire any- 
thing beyond their simplest needs. A little mutton, a 
little cocoa, and a liftle fruit brought up from the coast 
— that’s all they v/ant to make ’em happy. I’ve got ’em 
v:ell trained. They make their own clothes and hats 
out of a vegetable fibre and straw, and they^’re a con- 
tented lot. It’s a great thing,’ winds up Shane, Ho have 


96 Options 

made a people happy by the incultivation of such simple 
institutions.’ 

“Well, the next day, with the King’s permission, I has 
the McClintock open up a couple of sacks of my goods in 
the little plaza of the village. The Indians swarmed 
around by the hundred and looked the bargain-counter 
over. I shook red blankets at ’em, flashed finger-rings 
and ear-bobs, tried pearl necklaces and side-combs on 
the women, and a line of red hosiery on the men. ’Twas 
no use. They looked on like hungry graven images, 
but I never made a sale. I asked McClintock what was 
the trouble. Mac yawned three or four times, rolled 
a cigarette, made one or two confidential side remarks 
to a mule, and then condescended to inform me that the 
people had no money. 

“Just then up strolls King Patrick, big and red and 
royal as usual, with the gold chain over his chest and 
his cigar in front of him. 

“‘How’s business, W. D..^’ he asks. 

“‘Fine,’ says I. ‘It’s a bargain-day rush. I’ve got 
one more line of goods to offer before I shut up shop. 
I’ll try ’em with safety-razors. I’ve got two gross that 
I bought at a fire sale.’ 

“Shane laughs till some kind of mameluke or private 
secretary he carries with him has to hold him up. 

“ ‘O my sainted Aunt Jerusha !’ says he, ‘ain’t you one 
of the Babes in the Goods, W. D.? Don’t you know 
that no Indians ever shave They pull out their whis- 
kers instead.’ 


97 


Supply and Demand 

says I, Hhat’s just what these razors would 
do for ’em — they wouldn’t have any kick coming if they 
used ’em once.’ 

‘^Shane went away, and I could hear him laughing a 
block, if there had been any block. 

‘‘‘Tell ’em,’ says I to McClintock, ‘it ain’t money I 
want — tell ’em I’ll take gold-dust. Tell ’em I’ll allow 
’em sixteen dollars an ounce for it in trade. That’s 
what I’m out for — the dust.’ 

“Mac interprets, and you’d have thought a squadron 
of cops had charged the crowd to disperse it. Every 
uncle’s nephew and aunt’s niece of ’em faded away inside 
of two minutes. 

“At the royal palace that night me and the King 
talked it over. 

‘“They’ve got the dust hid out somewhere,’ says I, 
‘or they wouldn’t have been so sensitive about it.’ 

“ ‘They haven’t,’ says Shane. ‘What’s this gag you’ve 
got about gold? You been reading Edward Allan Poe? 
They ain’t got any gold.’ 

“ ‘They put it in quills,’ says I, ‘and then they empty 
it in jars, and then into sacks of twenty-five pounds 
each. I got it straight.’ 

“ ‘W. D.,’ says Shane, laughing and chewing his cigar, 
‘I don’t often see a white man, and I feel like putting you 
on. I don’t think you’ll get away from here alive, any- 
how, so I’m going to tell you. Come over here.’ 

“He draws aside a silk fibre curtain in a corner of the 
room and shows me a pile of buckskin sacks. 


98 Options 

^‘Torty of ’em,’ says Shane. ‘One arroba in each 
one. In round numbers, $^20,000 worth of gold-dust 
you see there. It’s all mine. It belongs to the Grand 
Yacuma. They bring it all to me. Two hundred and 
twenty thousand dollars — think of that, you glass-bead 
peddler,’ says Shane — ‘and all mine.’ 

“ ‘Little good it does you,’ says I, contemptuously and 
hatefully. ‘And so you are the government depository 
of this gang of moneyless money-makers? Don’t you 
pay enough interest on it to enable one of your deposit- 
ors to buy an Augusta (Maine) Pullman carbon diamond 
worth $200 for $4.85?’ 

“ ‘Listen,’ says Patrick Shane, with the sweat coming 
out on his brow. ‘I’m confidant with you, as yoxi have, 
somehow, enlisted my regards. Did you ever,’ he says, 
‘feel the avoirdupois power of gold — not the troy weight 
of it, but the sixteen-ounces-to-the-pound force of it?’ 

“‘Never,’ says 1. ‘I never take in any bad money.’ 

“Shane drops down on the floor and throws his arms 
over the sacks of gold-dust. 

“ ‘I love it,’ says he. ‘I want to feel the touch of it 
day and night. It’s my pleasure in life. I come in this 
room, and I’m a king and a rich man. I’ll be a million- 
aire in another year. The pile’s getting bigger every 
month. I’ve got the whole tribe washing out the sands 
in the creeks. I’m the happiest man in the world, W. D. 
I just want to be near this gold, and know it’s mine 
and it’s increasing every day. Now, you know,’ says he, 
‘why my Indians wauldn’t buy your goods. They can’L, 


99 


Supply and Demand 

They bring all the dust to me. I’m their king. I’ve 
taught ’em not to desire or admire. You might as well 
shut up shop.’ 

‘‘ ‘I’ll tell you what you are,’ says I. ‘You’re a plain, 
contemptible miser. You preach supply and you forget 
demand. Now, supply,’ I goes on, ‘is never anything 
but supply. On the contrary,’ says I, ‘demand is a much 
broader syllogism and assertion. Demand includes the 
rights of our women and children, and charity and 
friendship, and even a little begging on the street corners. 
They’ve both got to harmonise equally. And I’ve got a 
few tilings up my commercial sleeve yet,’ says I, ‘that 
may jostle your preconceived ideas of politics and eco- 
nomy.’ 

“The next morning I had McClintock bring up an- 
other mule-load of goods to the plaza and open it up. 
The people gathered around the same as before. 

“I got out the finest line of necklaces, bracelets, hair- 
combs, and earrings that I carried, and had the women 
put ’em on. And then I played trumps. 

“Out of my last pack I opened up a half gross of hand- 
mirrors, with solid tinfoil backs, and passed ’em around 
among the ladies. That was the first introduction of 
looking-glasses among the Peche Indians. 

“Shane walks by with his big laugh. 

“‘Business looking up any?’ he asks. 

“ ‘It’s looking at itself right now,’ says I. 

“By-and-by a kind of a murmur goes through the 
crowd. The women had looked into the magic crystal 


100 Options 

and seen that they were beautiful, and was confiding the 
secret to the men. The men seemed to be urging the 
lack of money and the hard times just before the election, 
but their excuses didn’t go, 

‘‘Then was my time. 

“I called McClintock away from an animated conver- 
sation with his mules and told him to do some interpret- 
ing. 

“ ‘Tell ’em,’ says I, ‘that gold-dust wull buy for them 
these befitting ornaments for kings and queens of the 
earth. Tell ’em the yellow sand they wash out of the 
waters for the High Sanctified Yacomay and Chop Suey 
of the tribe will buy the precious jewels and charms that 
will make them beautiful and preserve and pickle them 
from evil spirits. Tell ’em the ^Pittsburgh banks are 
paying four per cent, interest on deposits by mail, while 
this get-rich-frequently custodian of the public funds 
ain’t even paying attention. Keep telling ’em, Mac,’ 
says I, ‘to let the gold-dust family do their work. Talk 
to ’em like a born anti-Bryanite,’ says I. ‘Remind ’em 
that Tom Watson’s gone back to Georgia,’ says I, 

“McClintock waves his hand affectionately at one of 
his mules, and then hurls a few stickfuls of minion type 
at the mob of shoppers, 

“A gutta-percha Indian man, with a lady hanging on 
his arm, with three strings of my fish-scale jewelry and 
imitation marble beads around her neck, stands up on a 
block of stone and makes a talk that sounds like a man 
shaking dice in a box to fill aces and sixes. 


101 


Supply and Demand 

says,’ says McClintock, Hhat the people not 
know that gold-dust will buy their things. The women 
very mad. The Grand Yacuma tell them it no good 
but for keep to make bad spirits keep away.’ 

“‘You can’t keep bad spirits away from money,’ says 
I. 

“‘They say,’ goes on McClintock, ‘the Yacuma fool 
them. They raise plenty row.’ 

“‘Going! Going!’ says I. ‘Gold-dust or cash takes 
the entire stock. The dust weighed before you, and 
taken at sixteen dollars the ounce — the highest price 
on the Gaudymala coast.’ 

“Then the crowd disperses all of a sudden, and I don’t 
know what’s up. Mac and me packs away the hand- 
mirrors and jewelry they had handed back to us, and we 
had the mules back to the corral they had set apart for 
our garage. 

“While we was there we hear great noises of shouting, 
and down across the plaza runs Patrick Shane, hotfoot, 
with his clothes ripped half off, and scratches on his 
face like a cat had fought him hard for every one of 
its lives. 

“ ‘They’re looting the treasury, W. D.,’ he sings out. 
They’re going to kill me and you, too. Unlimber a 
couple of mules at once. We’ll have to make a get- 
away in a couple of minutes.’ 

“ ‘They’ve found out,’ says I, ‘the truth about the 
law of supply and demand.’ 


102 Options 

‘It’s the women, mostly,’ says the King. ‘And they 
used to admire me so !’ 

“ ‘They hadn’t seen looking-glasses then,’ says I. 

“‘They’ve got knives and hatchets,’ says Shane; 
‘hurry !’ 

“ ‘Take that roan mule,’ says I. ‘You and your law 
of supply ! I’ll ride the dun, for he’s two knots per hour 
the faster. The roan has a stiff knee, but he may make 
it,’ says L ‘If you’d included reciprocity in your polit- 
ical platform I might have given you the dun,’ says I. 

“Shane and McClintock and me mounted our mules 
and rode across the rawhide bridge just as the Peches 
reached the other side and began firing stones and long 
knives at us. W e cut the thongs that held up oor end 
of the bridge and headed for the coast.” 

A tall, bulky policeman came into Finch’s shop at that 
moment and leaned an elbow on the showcase. Finch 
nodded at him friend]3% 

“I heard down at Casey’s,” said the cop, in rumbling, 
husky tones, “that there was going to be a picnic of the 
Hat-Cleaners’ Union over at Bergen Beach, Sunday. Is 
that right?” 

“Sure,” said Finch. “There’ll be a dandy time.” 

“Gimme five tickets,” said the cop, throwing a five- 
dollar bill on the showcase. 

“Why,” said Finch, “ain’t you going it a little too — ” 

“Go to h — !” said the cop. “You got ’em to seU, 


Supply and Demand 103 

ain’t you? Somebody’s got to buy ’em. Wish I could 
go along.” 

I was glad to see Finch so well thought of in his neigh- 
borhood. 

And then in came a wee girl of seven, with dirty face 
and pure blue eyes and a smutched and insufficient dreas. 

‘‘Mamma says,” she recited shrilly, “that you must 
give me eighty cents for the grocer and nineteen for the 
milkman and five cents for me to buy hokey-pokey with 
— but she didn’t say that,” the elf concluded, with a 
hopeful but honest grin. 

Finch shelled out the money, counting it twice, but I 
noticed that the total sum that the small girl received 
was one dollar and four cents. 

“That’s the right kind of a law,” remarked Finch as 
he carefully broke some of the stitches of my hatband so 
that it would assuredly come off within a few days — 
“the law of supply and demand. But they’ve both got 
to work together. I’ll bet,” he went on, with his dry 
smile, “she’ll get j elly beans with that nickel — she likes 
’em. What’s supply if there’s no demand for it?” 

“What ever became of the King?” I asked, curiously. 

“Oh, I might have told you,” said Finch. “Tliat was 
Shane came in and bought the tickets. He came back 
with me, and he’s on the force now.” 


BURIED TREASURE 


There are many kinds of fools. Now, will everybody 
please sit still until they are called upon specifically to 
rise ? 

I had been every kind of fool except one. I had ex- 
pended my patrimony, pretended my matrimony, played 
poker, lawn-tennis, and bucket-shops — parted soon with 
my money in many ways. But there remained one role 
of the wearer of cap and bells that I had not played. 
That was the Seeker after Buried Treasure. To few 
does the delectable furor come. But of all the would-be 
followers in the hoof-prints of King Midas none has 
found a pursuit so rich in pleasurable promise. 

But, going back from my theme a while — as lame 
pens must do — I was a fool of the sentimental sort. I 
saw May Martha Mangum, and was hers. She was 
eighteen, the color of the white ivory keys of a new piano, 
beautiful, and possessed by the exquisite solemnity and 
pathetic witchery of an unsophisticated angel doomed to 
live in a small, dull, Texas prairie-town. She had a 
spirit and charm that could have enabled her to pluck 
rubies like raspberries from the crown of Belgium or 
any other sporty kingdom, but she did not know it, and 
I did not paint the picture for her. 

Yen see, I wanted May Martha Mangum for to have 
104 


Buried Treasure 


105 


and to hold, I wanted her to abide with me, and put my 
slippers and pipe away every day in places where they 
cannot be found of evenings. 

May Martha’s father was a man hidden behind whis- 
kers and spectacles. He lived for bugs and butterflies 
and all insects that fly or crawl or buzz or get down your 
back or in the butter. He was an etymologist, or words 
to that eflfect. He spent his life seining the air for flying 
fish of the June-bug order, and tlien sticking pins 
through ’em and calling ’em names. 

He and May Martha were the whole family. He prized 
her highly as a fine specimen of the racibus humanus be- 
cause she saw that he had food at times, and put his 
clothes on right side before, and kept his alcohol-bottles 
filled. Scientists, they say, are apt to be absent-minded. 

There was another besides myself who thought May 
Martha Mangum one to be desired. That was Goodloe 
Btoks, a young man just home from college. He had 
all the attainments to be found in books — Latin, Greek, 
philosophy, and especially the higher branches of mathe- 
matics and logic. 

If it hadn’t been for his habit of pouring out this in- 
formation and learning on every one that he addressed, 
I’d have liked him pretty well. But, even as it was, he 
and I were, you would have thought, great pals. 

We got together every time we could because each of 
us wanted to pump the other for whatever straws we 
could find which way the wind blew from the heart of May 
Martha Mangum — rather a mixed metaphor; Goodloe 


106 Options 

Banks would never have been guilty of that. That is 
the way of rivals. 

You might say that Goodloe ran to books, manners, 
culture, rowing, intellect, and clothes, I would have put 
you in mind more of baseball and Friday-night debating 
societies — by way of culture — and maybe of a good 
horseback rider. 

But in our talks together, and in our visits and conver- 
sation w ith May Martha, neither Goodloe Banks nor I 
could find out which one of us she preferred. May 
Martha was a natural-born non-committal, and knew^ in 
her cradle how to keep people guessing. 

As I said, old man Mangum w^as absent-minded. 
After a long time he found out one day — a little butter- 
fly must have told him — that two young men w^ere 
trying to throw a net over the head of the young person, 
a daughter, or some such technical appendage, who 
looked after his comforts. 

I never knew scientists could rise to such occasions. 
Old Mangum orall}^ labelled and classified Goodloe and 
m^’^self easily among the low^est orders of the vertebrates ; 
and in English, too, without going any further into Latin 
than the simple references to Orgetori^, Bex Helretii — 
which is as far as I ever w'ent, myself. And he told us 
that if he ever caught us around his house again he 
w^ould add us to his collection. 

Goodloe Banks and I remained away five days, expect- 
ing the storm to subside. When we dared to call at the 
house again May Martha Mangum and her father were 


Buried Treasure 


107 

gone. Gone! The house they had rented was closed. 
Their little store of goods and chattels was gone also. 

And not a word of farewell to either of us from May 
Martha — not a white, fluttering note pinned to the 
hawthorn-bush ; not a chalk-mark on the gate-post nor 
a postcard in the post-office to give us a clew. 

For two months Goodloe Banks and I — separately — 
tried every scheme we could think of to track the run- 
aways. We used our friendship and influence with the 
ticket-agent, wdth livery-stable men, railroad conductors, 
and our one lone, lorn constable, but without results. 

Then we became better friends and worse enemies 
than ever. We forgathered in the back room of Sn3^der’s 
saloon every afternoon after w'ork, and played dominoes, 
and laid conversational traps to find out from each other 
if anything had been discovered. That is the way of 
rivals. 

Now, Goodloe Banks had a sarcastic w^ajr of display- 
ing his own learning and putting me in the class that was 
reading “Poor Jane Ray, her bird is dead, she cannot 
play.” Well, I rather liked Goodloe, and I had a con- 
tempt for his college learning, and I was alwaj^s regarded 
as good-natured, so I kept my temper. And I was try- 
ing to find out if he knew^ an^-^thing about May Martha, 
so I endured his society. 

In talking things over one afternoon he said to me: 

“Suppose you do find her, Ed, wherebj^ would you 
profit? Miss Mangum has a mind. Perhaps it is yet 
uncultured, but she is destmed for higher things than you 


108 Options 

could give her. I have talked with no one who seemed 
to appreciate more the enchantment of the ancient poets 
and writers and the modern cults that have assimilated 
and expended their philosophy of life. Don’t you think 
you are wasting your time looking for her?” 

‘‘My idea,” said I, “of a happy home is an eight-room 
house in a grove of live-oaks by the side of a cliarco on a 
Texas prairie. A piano,” I went on, “with an automatic 
player in the sitting-room, three thousand head of cattle 
under fence for a starter, a buckboard and ponies always 
hitched at a post for ‘the missus’ — and May Martha 
Mangum to spend the profits of the ranch as she pleases, 
and to abide with me, and put my slippers and pipe aw^ay 
every day in places wherp they cannot be found of even- 
ings. That,” said I, “is what is to be ; and a fig — a 
dried, Smyrna, Dago-stand fig — for your curriculums, 
cults, and philosophy.” 

“She is meant for higher things,” repeated Goodloe 
Banks. 

“Whatever she is meant for,” I answered, “just now 
she is out of pocket. And I shall find her as soon as I 
can without aid of the colleges.” 

“The game is blocked,” said Goodloe, putting down a 
domino; and we had the beer. 

Shortly after that a young farmer whom I knew came 
into town and brought me a folded blue paper. He said 
his grandfather had just died. I concealed a tear, and 
he went on to say that the old man had jealously guarded 
this paper for twenty years. He left it to his family as 


Buried Treasure 109 

part of his estate, the rest of which consisted of two 
mules and a hypotenuse of non-arable land. 

The sheet of paper was of the old, blue kind used dur- 
ing the rebellion of the abolitionists against the seces- 
sionists. It was dated June 14, 1863, and it described 
the hiding-place of ten burro-loads of gold and silver 
coin valued at three hundred thousand dollars. Old 
Rundle — grandfather of his grandson, Sam — was given 
the information by a Spanish priest who was in on the 
treasure-burying, and who died many years before — 
no, afterward — in old Bundle’s house. Old Rundle 
wrote it down from dictation. 

^‘Why didn’t your father look this up.^” I asked young 
Rundle. 

^‘He went blind before he could do so,” he replied. 

^^Why didn’t you hunt for it yourself.^” I asked. 

‘‘Well,” said he, ‘T’ve only known about the paper for 
ten years. First there was the spring ploughin’ to do, 
and then choppin’ the weeds out of the corn ; and then 
come takin’ fodder ; and mighty soon winter was on us. 
It seemed to run along that way year after year.” 

That sounded perfectly reasonable to me, so I took 
it up with yoiing Lee Rundle at once. 

The directions on the paper were simple. The whole 
burro cavalcade laden with the treasure started from an 
old Spanish mission in Dolores County. They travelled 
due south by the compass until they reached the Alamito 
River. They forded this, and buried the treasure on the 
top of a little mountain shaped like a pack-saddle stand- 


110 Options 

ing in a raw between two higher ones. A heap of stones 
marked the place of the buried treasure. All the party 
except the Spanish priest were killed by Indians a few 
days later. The secret was a monopoly. It looked 
good to me. 

Lee Rundle suggested that we rig out a camping outfit, 
hire a surveyor to run out the line from the Spanish mis- 
sion, and then spend the three hundred thousand dollars 
seeing the sights in Fort Worth. But, without being 
highly educated, I knew a way to save time and expense. 

We went to the State land-office and had a practical, 
what they call a ^‘working,” sketch made of all the sur- 
veys of land from the old mission to the Alamito River. 
On this map I drew a line due southward to the river. 
The length of lines of each survey and section of land 
was accurately given on the sketch. By these we found 
the point on the river and had a ‘^connection” made with 
it and an important, well-identified corner of the Los 
Animos five-league survey — a grant made by King 
Philip of Spain. 

By doing this we did not need to have the line run out 
by a surveyor. It was a great saving of expense and 
time. 

So, Lee Rundle and I fitted out a two-horse wagon 
team with all the accessories, and drove a hundred and 
forty-nine miles to Chico, the nearest town to the point 
we wished to reach. There we picked up a deputy 
county surveyor. He found the corner of the Los Ani- 
mos survey for us, ran out the five thousand seven hun- 


Buried Treasure 


111 


dred and twenty varas west that our sketch called for, 
laid a stone on the spot, had coffee and bacon, and 
caught the mail-stage back to Chico. 

I was pretty sure we would get that three hundred 
thousand dollars. Lee Rundle’s was to be only one 
third, because I was paying all the expenses. With that 
two hundred thousand dollars I knew I could find May 
Martha Mangiim if she was on earth. And wuth it I 
could flutter the butterflies in old man Mangum’s dove- 
cot, too. If I could find that treasure! 

But Lee and I established camp. Across the river 
were a dozen little mountains densely covered by cedar- 
brakes, but not one shaped like a pack-saddle. That did 
not deter us. Appearances are deceptive. A pack- 
saddle, like beauty, may exist only in the eye of the be- 
holder. 

I and the grandson of the treasure examined those 
^edar-covcred hills with the care of a lady hunting for 
the wicked flea. We explored every side, top, circum- 
ference, mean elevation, angle, slope, and concavity of 
every one for two miles up and down the river. We 
spent four days doing so. Then we hitched up the roan 
and the dun, and hauled the remains of the coffee and ba- 
con the one hundred and forty-nine miles back to Concho 
City. 

Lee Bundle chewed much tobacco on the return trip. 
I was busy driving, because I was in a hurry. 

As shortly as could be after our empty return, Good- 
loe Banks and I forgathered in the back room of Snyder’s 


112 Options 

saloon to play dominoes and fish for information. I told 
Goodloe about my expedition after the buried treasure. 

‘^If I could have found that three hundred thousand 
dollars,” I said to him, could have scoured and sifted 
the surface of the earth to find May Martha Mangum.” 

^‘She is meant for higher things,” said Goodloe. 
shall find her myself. But, tell me how you went about 
discovering the spot where this unearthed increment was 
imprudently buried.” 

I told him in the smallest detail. I showed him the 
draughtsman’s sketch with the distances marked plainly 
upon it. 

After glancing over it in a masterly way, he leaned 
back in his chair and bestowed upon me an explosion 
of sardonic, superior, collegiate laughter. 

‘^Well, you are a fool, Jim,” he said, when he could 
speak. 

‘‘It’s your play,” said I, patiently, fingering my 
double six. 

“TAventy,” said Goodloe, making two crosses on the 
table with his chalk. 

“Why am I a fool.?” I asked. “Buried treasure has 
been found before in many places.” 

“Because,” said he, “in calculating the point on the 
river where your line would strike you neglected to 
allow for the variation. The variation there would 
be nine degrees west. Let me have your pencil.” 

Goodloe Banks figured rapidly on the back of an en- 
velope. 


Buried Treasure 


113 


‘‘The distance, from north to south, of the line run 
from the Spanish mission,” said he, “is exactly twenty- 
two miles. It was run by a pocket-compass, according 
to your story, Allowing for the variation, the point 
on the Alamito River where you should have searched 
for your treasure is exactly six miles and nine hundred 
and forty-five varas farther west than the place you 
hit upon. Oh, what a fool you are, Jim !” 

“What is this variation that you speak of?” I asked. 
“I thought figures never lied.” 

“The variation of the magnetic compass,” said Good- 
loe, “from the true meridian.” 

He smiled in his superior way ; and then I saw come 
out in his face the singular, eager, consuming cupidity 
of the seeker after buried treasure. 

“Sometimes,” he said with the air of the oracle, “these 
old traditions of hidden money are not without founda- 
tion. Suppose you let me look over that paper describ- 
ing the location. Perhaps together we might ” 

The result was that Goodloe Banks and I, rivals in 
love, became companions in adventure. We went to 
Chico by stage from Huntersburg, the nearest railroad 
town. In Chico we hired a team drawing a covered 
spring-wagon and camping paraphernalia. We had the 
same surveyor run out our distance, as revised by Good- 
loe and his variations, and then dismissed him and sent 
him on his homeward road. 

It was night when we arrived. I fed the horses and 
made a fire near the bank of the river and cooked supper. 


114 Options 

Goodloe would have helped, but his education had not 
fitted him for practical things. 

But while I worked he cheered me with the expression 
of great thoughts handed dow’n from the dead ones of 
old. He quoted some translations from the Greek at 
much length. 

“Anacreon,” he explained. “That ^vas a favorite 
passage with Miss Mangum — as I recited it.” 

“She is meant for higher things,” said I, repeating his 
phrase. 

“Can there be anything higher,” asked Goodloe, “than 
to dw’ell in the society of the classics, to live in the atmos- 
phere of learning and culture.^ You have often decried 
education. What of 3mur wasted efforts through your 
ignorance of simple mathematics? Kow^ soon would you 
have found your treasure if my knowledge had not showm 
you your error?” 

“We’ll take a look at those hills across the river first,” 
said I, “and see what we find. I am still doubtful about 
variations. I have been brought up to believe that the 
needle is true to the pole.” 

The next morning was a bright June one. We were 
up early and had breakfast. Goodloe w'as charmed. 
He recited — Keats, I think it w^as, and Kellj" or Shelley 
— while I broiled the bacon. We were getting readj^ to 
cross the river, wdiich was little more than a shallow 
creek there, and explore the many sharp-peaked, cedar- 
covered hills on the other side. 

“My good Ulj^sses,” said Goodloe, slapping me on the 


Buried Treasure 


115 


shoulder wh^e I was washing the tin breakfast plates, 
^4et me see the enchanted document once more. I be- 
lieve it gives directions for climbing the hill shaped like 
a pack-saddle. I never saw a pack-saddle. What is it 
like, Jim?’’ 

^‘Score one against culture,” said I. know it 

when I see it.” 

Goodloe was looking at old Rundle’s document when 
he ripped out a most uncollegiate swear-w'ord. 

‘‘Come here,” he said, holding the paper up against the 
sunlight. “Look at that,” he said, laying his finger 
against it. 

On the blue paper — a thing I had never noticed before 
— I saw stand out in white letters the word and figures : 
“Malvern, 1898.” 

“What about it ?” I asked. 

“It’s the w^ater-raark,” said Goodloe. “The paper 
was manufactured in 1898. The writing on the paper 
is dated 1863. This is a palpable fraud.” 

“Oh, I don’t know,” said I. “The Rundles are pretty 
reliable, plain, uneducated country people. Maybe the 
paper manufacturers tried to perpetrate a swindle.” 

And then Goodloe Banks went as wild as his education 
permitted. He dropped the glasses off his nose and 
glared at me.” 

“I’ve often told you you were a fool,” he said. “You 
have let j^ourself be imposed upon by a clodhopper. 
And you have imposed upon me.” 

“How,” I asked, “have I imposed upon you?” 


116 Options 

‘‘By your ignorance/’ said he. “Twice I have dis- 
covered serious flaws in your plans that a common-school 
education should have enabled you to avoid. And,” he 
continued, “I have been put to expense that I could ill 
aflTord in pursuing this swindling quest. I am done 
with it.” 

I rose and pointed a large pewter spoon at him, fresh 
from the dish-water. 

“Goodloe Banks,” I said, “I care not one parboiled 
navy bean for your education. I always barely toler- 
ated it in any one, and I despised it in you. What has 
your learning done for you? It is a curse to yourself 
and a bore to your friends. Away,” I said-^“away 
with your water-marks and variations They are noth- 
ing to me. They shall not deflect me from the quest.” 

I pointed with my spoon across the river to a small 
mountain shaped like a pack-saddle. 

“I am going to search that mountain,” I went on, “for 
the treasure. Decide now whether you are in it or not. 
If you wish to let a water-mark or a variation shake 
your soul, you are no true adventurer. Decide.” 

A white cloud of dust began to rise far down the river 
road. It was the mail-wagon from Hesperus to Chico. 
Goodloe flagged it. 

“I am done with the swindle,” said he, sourly. “No 
one but a fool would pay any attention to that paper 
now. Well, you always were a fool, Jim. I leave you 
to your fate.” 

He gathered his personal traps, climbed into the mail- 


Buried Treasure 117 

wagon, adjusted his glasses nervously, and flew away in 
a cloud of dust. 

After I had washed the dishes and staked the horses on 
new grass, I crossed the shallow river and made my way 
slowly through the cedar-brakes up to the top of the hill 
shaped like a pack-saddle. 

It was a wonderful June day. Never in my life had I 
seen so many birds, so many butterflies, dragon-flies, 
grasshoppers, and such winged and stinged beasts of the 
air and fields. 

I investigated the hill shaped like a pack-saddle from 
base to summit, I found an absolute absence of signs 
relating to buried treasure. There was no pile of stones, 
no ancient blazes on the trees, none of the evidences of 
the three hundred thousand dollars, as set forth in the 
document of old man Rundle, 

I came down the hill in the cool of the afternoon. 
Suddenly, out of the cedar-brake I stepped into a beauti- 
ful green valley where a tributary small stream ran into 
the Alamito River. 

And there I was startled to see what I took to be a 
wild man, with unkempt beard and ragged hair, pursuing 
a giant butterfly with brilliant wings. 

^Terhaps he is an escaped madman,” I thought; and 
wondered how he had strayed so far from seats of educa- 
tion and learning. 

And then I took a few more steps and saw a vine-cov- 
ered cottage near the small stream. And in a little 


118 Options 

grassy glade I saw May Martha Mangum plucking wild 
flowers. 

She straightened up and looked at me. For the first 
time since I knew her I saw^ her face — which was the 
color of the w^hite keys of a new piano — turn pink. I 
walked toward her without a word. She let the gathered 
flowers trickle slowly from her hand to the grass. 

knew you would come, Jim,” she said clearly. 
‘‘Father wouldn’t let me write, but I knew you would 
come.” 

What followed, you may guess — there was my wagon 
and team just across the river. 

I’ve often wondered what good too much education is 
to a man if he can’t use it for himself. If all the benefits 
of it are to go to others, where does it come in? 

For May Martha Mangum abides with me. There is 
an eight-room house in a live-oak grove, and a piano 
with an automatic player, and a good start toward the 
three thousand head of cattle is under fence. 

And when I ride home at night my pipe and slippers 
are put away in places where they cannot be found. 

But who cares for that? Who cares — who cares? 


TO HIM WHO WAITS 


The Hermit of the Hudson was hustling about his cave 
with unusual animation. 

The cave was on or in the top of a little spur of the 
Catskills that had strayed down to the river’s edge, and> 
not having a ferry ticket, had to stop there. The bijou 
mountains were densely wooded and were infested by fe- 
rocious squirrels and woodpeckers that forever menaced 
the summer transients. Like a badly sewn strip of 
white braid, a macadamized road ran between the green 
skirt of the hills and the foamy lace of the river’s edge. 
A dim path wound from the comfortable road up a rocky 
height to the hermit’s cave. One mile up-stream was 
the Viewpoint Inn, to which summer folk from the city 
came ; leaving cool, electric-fanned apartments that they 
might be driven about in burning sunshine, shrieking, 
in gasoline launches, by spindle-legged Modreds bearing 
the blankest of shields. 

Train 3"our lorgnette upon the hermit and let your eye 
receive the personal touch that shall endear you to the 
kero. 

A man of forty, judging him fairly, with long hair 
curling at the ends, dramatic eyes, and a forked brown 
beard like those that were imposed upon the West some 
years ago by self-appointed “divine healers” who suc- 
119 


120 


Options 

ceeded the grasshopper crop. His outward vesture ap- 
peared to be kind of gunny-sacking, cut and made into 
a garment that would have made the fortune of a London 
tailor. His long, well-shaped fingers, delicate nose, and 
poise of manner raised him high above the class of her- 
mits who fear water and bury money in oyster-cans in 
their caves in spots indicated by rude crosses chipped in 
the stone wall above. 

The hermit’s home was not altogether a cave. The 
cave was an addition to the hermitage, which was a rude 
hut made of poles daubed with clay and covered with the 
best quality of rust-proof zinc roofing. 

In the house proper there were stone slabs for seats, a 
rustic bookcase made of unplaned poplar planks, and a 
table formed of a wooden slab laid across two upright 
pieces of granite — something between the furniture of 
a Druid temple and that of a Broadway beefsteak dun- 
geon. Hung against the walls were skins of wild animals 
purchased in the vicinity of Eighth Street and Univer- 
sity Place, New York. 

The rear of the cabin merged into the cave. There 
the hermit cooked his meals on a rude stone hearth. With 
infinite patience and an old axe he had chopped natural 
shelves in the rocky walls. On them stood his stores of 
flour, bacon, lard, talcum-powder, kerosene, baking- 
powder, soda-mint tablets, pepper, salt, and Olivo-Cremo 
Emulsion for chaps and roughness of the hands and face. 

The hermit had hermited there for ten years. He was 


To Him Who Waits 


121 


an asset of the Viewpoint Inn. To its guests he was 
second in interest only to the Mysterious Echo in the 
Haunted Glen. And the Lover’s Leap beat him only a 
few inches, flat-footed. He was known far (but not very 
wide, on account of the topography) as a scholar of 
brilliant intellect who had forsworn the world because 
he had been jilted in a love affair. Every Saturday 
night the Viewpoint Inn sent to him surreptitiously a 
basket of provisions. He never left the immediate out- 
skirts of his hermitage. Guests of the inn who visited 
him said his store of knowledge, wit, and scintillating 
philosophy were simply wonderful, you know. That 
summer the Viewpoint Inn was crowded with guests. So, 
on Saturday nights, there were extra cans of tomatoes, 
and sirloin steak, instead of ^^rounds,” in the hermit’s 
basket. 

Now you have the material allegations in the case. 
So, make w^ay for Romance. 

Evidently the heraiit expected a visitor. He carefully 
combed liis long hair and parted his apostolic beard. 
When the ninety-eight-cent alarm-clock on a stone shelf 
announced the hour of five he picked up his gunny-sack- 
ing skirts, brushed them carefully, gathered an oaken 
staff, and strolled slowly into the tliick woods that 
surrounded the hermitage. 

He had not long to wait. Up the faint pathway, 
slippery with its carpet of pine-needles, toiled Beatrix, 
youngest and fairest of the famous Trenholme sisters. 
She was all in blue from hat to canvas pumps, varying 


122 Options 

in tint from the shade of the tinkle of a bluebell at 
daybreak on a spring Saturday to a deep hue of a 
Monday morning at nine when the washerwoman has 
failed to show up. 

Beatrix dug her cerulean parasol deep into the pine- 
needles and sighed. The hermit, on the q, f., removed a 
grass burr from the ankle of one sandalled foot with the 
big toe of his other one. She blued — and almost starched 
and ironed him — with her cobalt eyes. 

‘Tt must be so nice,” she said in little, tremulous gasps, 
‘‘to be a hermit, and have ladies climb mountains to talk 
to you.” 

The hermit folded his arms and leaned against a tree. 
Beatrix, with a sigh, settled dowm upon the mat of pine- 
needles like a bluebird upon her nest. The hermit fol- 
lowed suit ; drawing his feet rather awkwardly under his 
gunny-sacking. 

“It must be nice to be a mountain,” said he, with pon- 
derous lightness, “and have angels in blue climb up you 
instead of flying over you.” 

“Mamma had neuralgia,” said Beatrix, “and went to 
bed, or I couldn’t have come. It’s dreadfully hot at that 
horrid old inn. But we hadn’t the money to go anywhere 
else this summer.” 

“Last night,” said the hermit, “I climbed to the top of 
that big rock above us. I could see the lights of the inn 
and hear a strain or two of the music when the wind was 
right. I imagined yon moving gracefully in the arms of 
others to the dreamy mu-sic of the waltz amid the fra- 


To Him Who Waits 123 

grance of flowers. Think how lonely I must have 
been 1” 

The youngest, handsomest, and poorest of the famous 
Trenholme sisters sighed. 

^‘You haven’t quite hit it,” she said, plaintively. ‘T 
was moving gracefully at the arms of another. Mamma 
had one of her periodical attacks of rheumatism in both 
elbows and shoulders, and I had to rub them for an hour 
with that horrid old liniment. I hope you didn’t think 
that smelled like flowers. You know, there were some 
West Point boys and a yacht load of young men from the 
city at last evening’s weekly dance. I’ve known maiama 
to sit by an open window for three hours with one half ©f 
her registering 85 degrees and the other half frost-bitten, 
and never sneeze once. But just let a bunch of inelif ibles 
come around w’here I am, and she’ll begin to swell at the 
knuckles and shriek with pain. And I have to take her 
to her room and rub her arras. To see Manama dressed 
you’d be surprised to know the number of square inches 
of surface there are to her arms. I think it must be de- 
lightful to be a hermit. That — cassock — or gabar- 
dine, isn’t it.^ — that you wear is so becoming. Do you 
make it — or them — of course you must have changes — 
yourself.? And what a blessed relief it must be to wear 
sandals instead of shoes ! Think how *ijse must suffer — 
no matter how small I buy my shoes they always pinch 
my toes. Oh, why can’t there be lady hermits, too !” 

The beautifulest and most adolescent Trenholme sister 
extended two slender blue ankles that ended in two enor- 


124 Options 

mous blue-silk bows that almost concealed two fairy Ox- 
fords, also of one of the forty-seven shades of blue. The 
hermit, as if impelled by a kind of reflex-telepathic action, 
drew his bare toes farther beneath his gunny-sacking. 

‘T have heard about the romance of your life,” said 
Miss Trenholme, softly. ^^They have it printed on the 
back of the menu card at the inn. Was she very beauti- 
ful and charming?” 

‘‘On the bills of fare !” muttered the hermit ; “but what 
do I care for the world’s babble? Yes, she was of the 
highest and grandest type. Then,” he continued, 

I thought the world could never contain another equal to 
her. So I forsook it and repaired to this mountain fast- 
ness to spend the remainder of my life alone — to devote 
and dedicate my remaining years to her memory.” 

“It’s grand,” said Miss Trenholme, “absolutely grand ! 
I think a hermit’s life is the ideal one. No bill-collectors 
calling, no dressing for dinner — how I’d like to be one! 
But there’s no such luck for me. If I don’t marry this 
season I honestly believe mamma will force me into settle- 
ment work or trimming hats. It isn’t because I’m getting 
old or ugly ; but we haven’t enough money left to butt in 
at any of the swell places any more. And I don’t want 
to marry — unless it’s somebody I like. That’s why I’d 
like to be a hermit. Hermits don’t ever marry, do they ?’^ 

“Hundreds of ’em,” said the hermit, “when they’ve 
found the right one.” 

“But they’re hermits,” said the youngest and beauti- 
fulest, “because they’ve lost the right one, aren’t they?” 


To Him Who Waits 


125 


“Because they think they have,” answered the recluse, 
fatuously. ‘‘Wisdom comes to one in a mountain cave 
as well as to one in the world of ‘swells/ as I believe they 
are called in the argot.” 

“When one of the ‘swells/ brings it to them,” said Miss 
Trenholme. “And my folks are swells. That’s the 
trouble. But there are so many swells at the seashore 
in the summer-time that we hardly amount to more than 
ripples. So we’ve had to put all our money into river and 
harbor appropriations. We were all girls, you know. 
There were four of us. I’m the only surviving one. The 
others have been married off. All to money. Mamma 
is so proud of my sisters. They send her the loveliest 
pen-wipers and art calendars every Christmas. I’m the 
only one on the market now. I’m forbidden to look at 
any one w^ho hasn’t money.” 

“But ” began the hermit. 

“But, oh,” said the beautifulest, “of course hermits 
have great pots of gold and doubloons buried somewhere 
near three great oak-trees. They all have.” 

“I have not,” said the hermit, regretfully. 

“I’m so sorry,” said Miss Trenholme. “I always 
thought they had. I think I must go now.” 

Oh, beyond question, she was the beautifulest. 

“Fair lady ” began the hermit. 

“I am Beatrix Trenholme — some call me Trix,” she 
said. “You must come to the inn to see me.” 

“I haven’t been a stone’s-throw from my cave in ten 
years,” said the hermit. 


126 Options 

^‘You must come to see me there,’’ she repeated* 
“Any evening except Thursday.” 

The hermit smiled weakly. 

“Good-bye,” she said, gathering the folds of her pale- 
blue skirt. “I shall expect you. But not on Thursday 
evening, remember.” 

What an interest it would give to the future menu cards 
of the Viewpoint Inn to have these printed lines added to 
them : “Only once during the more than ten years of his 
lonely existence did the mountain hermit leave his famous 
cave. That was when he was irresistibly drawn to the 
inn by the fascinations of Miss Beatrix Trenholme, 
youngest and most beautiful of the celebrated Trenholme 
sisters, whose brilliant marriage to ” 

Aye, to whom.?^ 

The hermit walked back to the hermitage. At the 
door stood Bob Binkley, his old friend and companion of 
the days before he had renounced the world — Bob, him- 
self, arrayed like the orchids of the greenhouse in the 
summer man’s polychromatic garb — Bob, the million- 
aire, with his fat, firm, smooth, shrewd face, his diamond 
rings, sparkling fob-chain, and pleated bosom. He was 
two years older than the hermit, and looked five j^ears 
younger. 

“You’re Hamp Ellison, in spite of those whiskers and 
that going-away bathrobe,” he shouted. “I read about 
you on the bill of fare at the inn. They’ve run your bi- 
ography in between the cheese and ‘Not Responsible for 


To Him Who Waits 127i 

Coats and Umbrellas/ What’d you do it for, Hamp? 
And ten years, too — gee whilikins !” 

‘^You’re just the same,” said the hermit. ‘‘Come in 
and sit down. Sit on that limestone rock over there ; iVs 
softer than the granite.” 

“I can’t understand it, old man,” said Binkley. “I 
can see how you could give up a woman for ten years, but 
not ten years for a woman. Of course I know why you 
did it. Everybody does. Edith Carr. She jilted four 
or five besides you. But you were the only one who took 
to a hole in the ground. The others had recourse to 
whiskey, the Klondike, politics, and that similia similibus 
cure. But, say — Hamp, Edith Carr was j ust about the 
finest woman in the world — high-toned and proud and 
noble, and playing her ideals to win at all kinds of odds. 
She certainly was a cracker jack.” 

“After I renounced the world,” said the hermit, “I 
never heard of her again.” 

“She married me,” said Binkley. 

The hermit leaned against the wooden walls of his ante- 
cave and wriggled his toes. 

“I know how you feel about it,” said Binkley. “What 
else could she do ? There were her four sisters and her 
mother and old man Carr — you remember how he put 
all the money he had into dirigible balloons? Well, 
everything was coming down and nothing going up with 
’em, as you might say. Well, I know Edith as well as 
you do — although I married her. I was worth a million 
then, but I’ve run it up since to between five and six. It 


128 Options 

wasn’t me she wanted as much as — well, it was about 
like this : She had that bunch on her hands, and they 
had to be taken care of. Edith married me two months 
after you did the ground-squirrel act. I thought she 
liked me, too, at the time.” 

‘^And now ?” inquired the recluse. 

«We’re better friends than ever now. She got a di- 
vorce from me two years ago. Just incompatibility. I 
didn’t put in any defence. Well, well, well, Hamp, this 
is certainly a funny dugout you’ve built here. But you 
always were a hero of fiction. Seems like you’d have been 
the very one to strike Edith’s fancy. Maybe you did — 
but it’s the bank-roll that catches ’em, my boy — your 
caves and whiskers won’t do it. Honestly, Hamp, don’t 
you think you’ve been a darned fool.?” 

The hermit smiled behind his tangled beard. He was 
and always had been so superior to the crude and mer- 
cenary Binkley that even his vulgarities could not anger 
him. IMoreover, his studies and meditations in his re- 
treat had raised him far above the little vanities of the 
world. His little mountainside had been almost an 
Olympus, over the edge of which he saw, smiling, the 
bolts hurled in the valleys of man below. Had his ten 
years of renunciation, of thought, of devotion to an ideal, 
of living scorn of a sordid world, been in vain ? Up from 
the world had come to him the youngest and beautifulest 
— fairer than Edith — one and three seventh times 
lovelier than the seven-years-served Rachel. So the her- 
mit smiled in his beard. 


To Him Who Waits 


129 


When Binkley had relieved the hermitage from 
the blot of his presence and the first faint star showed 
above the pines, the hermit got the can of baking- 
powder from his cupboard. He still smiled behind his 
beard. 

There was a slight rustle in the doorway. There stood 
Edith Carr, with all the added beauty and stateliness and 
noble bearing that ten years had brought her. 

She was never one to chatter. She looked at the her- 
mit 'with her large, thinking^ dark eyes. The hermit 
stood still, surprised into a pose as motionless as her own. 
Only his subconscious sense of the fitness of things caused 
him to turn the baking-powder can slowly in his hands 
until its red label w^as hidden against his bosom. 

‘T am stopping at the inn,” said lidith, in low but clear 
tones. ‘T heard of you there. I told myself that I 
must see you. I want to ask your forgiveness. I sold my 
happiness for money. There were others to be provided 
for — but that does not excuse me. I just wanted to see 
you and ask your forgiveness. You have lived here ten 
years, they tell me, cherishing my memory ! I was blind, 
Hampton. I could not see then that all the money in the 
world cannot weigh in the scales against a faithful heart. 
If — but it is too late now, of course.” 

Her assertion w^as a question clothed as best it could be 
in a loving woman’s pride. But through the thin dis- 
guise the hermit saw easily that his lady had come back 
to him — if he chose. He had won a golden crown — if 
it pleased him to take it. The reward of his decade of 


130 Options 

faithfulness was ready for his hand — if he desired to 
stretch it forth. 

For the space of one minute the old enchantment shone 
upon him with a reflected radiance. And then by turns 
he felt the manly sensations of indignation at having been 
discarded, and of repugnance at having been — as it were 
’ — sought again. And last of all — how strange that it 
should have come at last! — the pale-blue vision of the 
beautifulest of the Trenholme sisters illuminated his 
mind’s eye and left him without a waver. 

‘‘It is too late,” he said, in deep tones, pressing the 
baking-powder can against his heart. 

Once she turned after she had gone slowly twenty 
yards down the path. The hermit had begun to twist 
the lid off his can, but he hid it again under his sacking 
robe. He could see her great eyes shining sadly through 
the twilight ; but he stood inflexible in the doorway of his 
shack and made no sign. 

Just as the moon rose on Thursday evening the hermit 
was seized by the world-madness. 

Up from the inn, fainter than the horns of elfland, 
came now and then a few bars of music played by the ca- 
sino band. The Hudson w^as broadened by the night into 
an illimitable sea — those lights, dimly seen on its oppo- 
site shore, were not beacons for prosaic trolley-lines, but 
low-set stars millions of miles away. The waters in front 
of the inn were gay with fireflies — or were they motor- 


To Him Who Waits 


131 


boats, smelling of gasoline and oil ? Once the hermit had 
known these things and had sported with Amaryllis in 
the shade of the red-and-white-striped awnings. But 
for ten years he had turned a heedless ear to these far-off 
echoes of a frivolous world. But to-night there was 
something wrong. 

The casino band was playing a waltz — a waltz. 
What a fool he had been to tear deliberately ten years of 
his life from the calendar of existence for one who had 
given him up for the false joys that wealth — ^^tum ti turn 
ti turn ti” — how did that waltz go.^ But those years 
had not been sacrificed — had they not brought him the 
star and pearl of all the world, the youngest and beauti- 
fulest of 

^‘But do not come on Thursday evening,” she had in- 
sisted. Perhaps by now she would be moving slowly and 
gracefully to the strains of that waltz, held closely by 
West Pointers or city commuters, while he, who had read 
in her eyes things that had recompensed him for ten lost 
years of life, moped like some wild animal in its mountain 
den. Why should ” 

‘‘Damn it,” said the hermit, suddenly, “I’ll do it !” 

He threw down his Marcus Aurelius and threw off his 
gunny-sack toga. He dragged a dust-covered trunk 
from a corner of the cave, and with difficulty wrenched 
open its lid. 

Candles he had in plenty, and the cave was soon aglow. 
Clothes — ten years old in cut — scissors, razors, hats. 


132 Options 

shoes, all his discarded attire and belongings, were 
dragged ruthlessly from their renunciatory rest and 
strewn about in painful disorder. 

A pair of scissors soon reduced his beard sufficiently 
for the dulled razors to perform approximately their of- 
fice. Cutting his own hair was beyond the hermit’s skill. 
So he only combed and brushed it backward as smoothly 
as he could. Charity forbids us to consider the heart- 
burnings and exertions of one so long removed from 
haberdashery and society. 

At the last the hermit went to an inner corner of his 
cave and began to dig in the soft earth with a long iron 
spoon. Out of the cavity he thus made he drew a tin can, 
and out of the can three thousand dollars in bills, tightly 
rolled and wrapped in oiled silk. He was a real hermit, 
as this may assure you. 

You may take a brief look at him as he hastens down 
the little mountainside. A long, wrinkled, black frock- 
coat reached to his calves. White duck trousers, unac- 
quainted with the tailor’s goose, a pink shirt, white stand- 
ing collar with brilliant blue butterfly tie, and buttoned 
congress gaiters. But think, sir and madam — ten 
years ! From beneath a narrow-brimmed straw hat with 
a striped band flowed his hair. Seeing him, with all your 
shrewdness you could not have guessed him. You would 
have said that he played Hamlet — or the tuba — or 
pinochle — you would never have laid your hand on your 
heart and said : ^^He is a hermit who lived ten years in 
a cave for love of one lady — to win another.” 


To Him Who Waits 


133 


The dancing pavilion extended above the waters of the 
river. Gay lanterns and frosted electric globes shed a 
soft glamour within it. A hundred ladies and gentlemen 
from the inn and summer cottages flitted in and about 
it. To the left of the dusty roadway down which the 
hermit had tramped were the inn and grill-room. Some- 
thing seemed to be on there, too. The windows were 
brilliantly lighted, and music was playing — music dif- 
ferent from the two-steps and waltzes of the casino 
band. 

A negro man wearing a white jacket came through the 
iron gate, with its immense granite posts and wrought- 
iron lamp-holders. 

^^What is going on here to-night?” asked the hermit. 

^‘Well, sah,” said the servitor, “dey is having de reg’lar 
Thursday-evenin’ dance in de casino. And in de grill- 
room dere’s a beefsteak dinner, sah.” 

The hermit glanced up at the inn on the hillside whence 
burst suddenly a triumphant strain of splendid harmony. 

“And up there,” said he, “they are playing Mendels- 
sohn — what is going on up there?” 

“Up in de inn,” said the dusky one, “dey is a weddin’ 
goin’ on. Mr. Binkley, a mighty rich man, am marryin’ 
Miss Trenholme, sah — de young lady who am quite de 
belle of de place, sah.” 


HE ALSO SERVES 


If I could have a thousand years — just one little 
thousand years — more of life, I might, in that time, 
draw near enough to true Romance to touch the hem of 
her robe. 

Up from ships men come, and from waste places and 
forest and road and garret and cellar to maunder to me in 
strangely distributed words of the tilings they have seen 
and considered. The recording of their tales is no more 
than a matter of ears and fingers. There are only two 
fates I dread — deafness and writer’s cramp. The hand 
is yet steady ; let the ear bear the blame if these printed 
words be not in the order they were delivered to me by 
Hunky Magee, true camp-follower of fortune. 

Biography shall claim you but an instant — I first 
knew Hunky when he was head-waiter at Chubb’s little 
beefsteak restaurant and cafe on Third Avenue. There 
was only one waiter besides. 

Then, successively, I caromed against him in the little 
streets of the Big City after his trip to Alaska, his voyage 
as cook with a treasure-seeking expedition to the Carib- 
bean, and his failure as a pearl-fisher in the Arkansas 
River. Between these dashes into the land of adventure 
he usually came back to Chubb’s for a while. Chubb’s 
was a port for him when gales blew too high ; but when you 
134 


He Also Serves 


135 


dined there and Hunky went for your steak you never 
knew whether he would come to anchor in the kitchen or 
in the Malayan Archipelago. You wouldn’t care for his 
description — he was soft of voice and hard of face, and 
rarely had to use more than one eye to quell any ap- 
proach to a disturbance among Chubb’s customers. 

One night I found Hunky standing at a corner of 
Twenty-third Street and Third Avenue after an absence 
of several months. In ten minutes we had a little round 
table between us in a quiet corner, and my ears began to 
get busy. I leave out my sly ruses and feints to draw 
Hunky’s word-of-mouth blows — it all came to something 
like this : 

‘‘Speaking of the next election,” said Hunky, “did you 
ever know much about Indians ? No I don’t mean the 
Cooper, Beadle, cigar-store, or Laughing Water kind — 
I mean the modern Indian — the kind that takes Greek 
prizes in colleges and scalps the half-back on the other 
side in football games. The kind that eats macaroons 
and tea in the afternoons with the daughter of the pro- 
fessor of biology, and fills up on grasshoppers and fried 
rattlesnake when they get back to the ancestral wickiup. 

“Well, they ain’t so bad. I like ’em better than most 
foreigners that have come over in the last few hundred 
years. One thing about the Indian is this : when he mixes 
with the white race he swaps all his own vices for them of 
the pale-faces — and he retains all his own virtues. Well, 
his virtues are enough to call out the reserves whenever 


136 Options 

he lets ’em loose. But the imported foreigners adopt 
our virtues and keep their own vices — and it’s going to 
take our whole standing army some day to police that 
gang. 

“But let me tell you about the trip I took to Mexico 
with High Jack Snakefeeder, a Cherokee twice removed, 
a graduate of a Pennsylvania college and the latest thing 
in pointed-toed, rubber-heeled, patent kid moccasins and 
Madras hunting-shirt with turned-back cuffs. He was 
a friend of mine. I met him in Tahlequah when I was out 
there during the land boom, and we got thick. He had 
got all there was out of colleges and had come back to 
lead his people out of Egypt. Pie was a man of first- 
class style and wrote essays, and had been invited to visit 
rich guys’ houses in Boston and such places. 

“There was a Cherokee girl in Muscogee that High 
’Jack was foolish about. Pie took me to see her a few 
times. Her name was Florence Blue Feather — but you 
want to clear your mind of all ideas of squaws with nose- 
rings and army blankets. This young lady was whiter 
than you are, and better educated than I ever was. You 
couldn’t have told her from any of the girls shopping in 
the swell Third Avenue stores. I liked her so well that I 
got to calling on her now and then when High Jack w^asn’t 
along, which is the way of friends in such matters. She 
w^as educated at the Muscogee College, and w^as making a 
specialty of — let’s see — eth — yes, ethnology. That’s 
the art that goes back and traces the descent of different 
races of people, leading up from jelly-fish through mon- 


He Also Serves 


137 


keys and to the O’Briens. High Jack had took up that 
line too, and had read papers about it before all kinds of 
riotous assemblies — Chautauquas and Choctaws and 
chowder-parties, and such. Having a mutual taste for 
musty information like that was what made ’em like each 
other, I suppose. But I don’t know ! What they call 
congeniality of tastes ain’t always it. Now, when Miss 
Blue Feather and me was talking together, I listened to 
her affidavits about the first families of the Land of Nod 
being cousins german (well, if the Germans don’t nod, 
who does?) to the mound-builders of Ohio with incompre- 
hension and respect. And when I’d tell her about the 
Bowery and Coney Island, and sing her a few songs that 
I’d heard the Jamaica niggers sing at their church lawn- 
parties, she didn’t look much less interested than she did 
when High Jack would tell her that he had a pipe that 
the first inhabitants of America originally arrived here 
on stilts after a freshet at Tenafly, New Jersey. 

‘^But I was going to tell you more about High Jack. 

“About six months ago I get a letter from him, saying 
he’d been commissioned by the Minority Report Bureau 
of Ethnology at Washington to go down to Mexico and 
translate some excavations or dig up the meaning of some 
shorthand notes on some ruins — or something of that 
sort. And if I’d go along he could squeeze the price into 
the expense account. 

“Well, I’d been holding a napkin over my arm at 
Chubb’s about long enough then, so I wired High Jack 


138 Options 

‘Yes’; and he sent me a ticket, and I met him in Wash- 
ington, and he had a lot of news to tell me. First of all 
was that Florence Blue Feather had suddenly disap- 
peared from her home and environments. 

“ ‘Run away?’ I asked. 

“ ‘Vanished,’ says High Jack. ‘Disappeared like your 
shadow when the sun goes under a cloud. She was seen 
on the street, and then she turned a corner and nobody 
ever seen her afterward. The whole community turned 
out to look for her, but we never found a clew.’ 

“‘That’s bad — that’s bad,’ says I. ‘She was a 
mighty nice girl, and as smart as you find ’em.’ 

“High Jack seemed to take it hard. I guess he must 
have esteemed Miss Blue Feather quite highly. I could 
see that he’d referred the matter to the whiskey-jug« 
That was his weak point — and many another man’s. 
I’ve noticed that when a man loses a girl he generally 
takes to drink either just before or just after it happens. 

“From Washington we railroaded it to New Orleans^ 
and there took a tramp steamer bound for Belize. And 
a gale pounded us all down the Caribbean, and nearly 
wrecked us on the Yucatan coast opposite a little town 
without a harbor called Boca de Coacoyula. Suppose 
the ship had run against that name in the dark ! 

“‘Better fifty years of Europe than a cyclone in the 
bay,’ says High Jack Snakefeeder. So we get the cap- 
tain to send us ashore in a dory when the squall seemed to 
cease from squalling. 

“‘We will find ruins here or make ’em,’ says High. 


He Also Serves 139 

‘The Government doesn’t care which we do. An appro- 
priation is an appropriation.’ 

“Boca de Coacoyula w^as a dead town. Them biblical 
towns we read about — Tired and Siphon — after they 
was destroyed, they must have looked like Forty-second 
Street and Broadway compared to this Boca place. It 
still claimed 1300 inhabitants as estimated and engraved 
on the stone courthouse by the census-taker in 1597. 
The citizens were a mixture of Indians and other Indians ; 
but some of ’em was light-colored, which I was surprised 
to see. The town was huddled up on the shore, with 
woods so thick around it that a subpoena-server couldn’t 
have reached a monkey ten yards away with the papers. 
We wondered what kept it from being annexed to 
Kansas ; but we soon found out that it was Major Bing. 

“Major Bing was the ointment around the fly. He 
had the cochineal, sarsaparilla, logwood, annatto hemp, 
and all other dye-woods and pure food adulteration con- 
cessions cornered. He had five sixths of the Boca de 
Thingama-jiggers working for him on shares. It was a 
beautiful graft. We used to brag about Morgan and 
E. H. and others of our wusest when I was in the prov- 
inces — but now no more. That peninsula has got our 
little country turned into a submarine without even the 
observation tower showing. 

“Major Bing’s idea was this : He had the population 
go forth into the forest and gather these products. 
When they brought ’em in he gave ’em one fifth for their 


140 Options 

trouble. Sometimes they’d strike and demand a sixth. 
The Major always gave in to ’em. 

‘‘The Major had a bungalow so close on the sea that 
the nine-inch tide seeped through the cracks in the kitchen 
floor. Me and him and High Jack Snakefeeder sat on 
the porch and drank rum from noon till midnight. He 
said he had piled up $300,000 in New Orleans banks, and 
High and me could stay with him forever if we would. 
But High Jack happened to think of the United States, 
and began to talk ethnology. 

“‘Ruins!’ says Major Bing. ‘The woods are full of 
’em. I don’t know how far they date back, but they was 
here before I came.’ 

“High Jack asks what form of worship the citizens of 
that locality are addicted to. 

“‘Why,’ says the Major, rubbing his nose, ‘I can’t 
hardly say. I imagine it’s infidel or Aztec or Noncon- 
formist or something like that. There’s a church here — 
a Methodist or some other kind — with a parson named 
Skidder. He claims to have converted the people to 
Christianity. He and me don’t assimilate except on 
state occasions. I imagine they worship some kind of 
gods or idols yet. But Skidder says he has ’em in the 
fold.’ 

“A few days later High Jack and me, prowling around, 
strikes a plain path into the forest, and follows it a good 
four miles. Then a branch turns to the left. We go a 
mile, maybe, down that, and run up against the finest 
ruin you ever saw — solid stone with trees and vines and 


He Also Serves 


141 


underbrush all growing up against it and in it and 
through it. All over it was chiselled carvings of funny 
beasts and people that would have been arrested if they’d 
ever come out in vaudeville that way. We approached 
it from the rear. 

‘^High Jack had been drinking too much rum ever since 
we landed in Boca. You know how an Indian is — the 
palefaces fixed his clock when they introduced him to 
firewater. He’d brought a quart along with him. 

^^^Hunky/ says he, ^we’ll explore the ancient temple. 
It may be that the storm that landed us here was pro- 
pitious. The Minority Report Bureau of Ethnology,’ 
says he, ^may yet profit by the vagaries of wind and tide.’ 

“We went in the rear door of the bum edifice. We 
struck a kind of alcove without bath. There was a gran- 
ite davenport, and a stone wash-stand without any soap 
or exit for the water, and some hardwood pegs drove into 
holes in the wall, and that was all. To go out of that 
furnished apartment into a Harlem hall bedroom would 
make you feel like getting back home from an amateur 
violoncello solo at an East Side Settlement house. 

“While High was examining some hieroglyphics on the 
wall that the stone-masons must have made when their 
tools slipped, I stepped into the front room. That was 
at least thirty by fifty feet, stone floor, six little windows 
like square port-holes that didn’t let much light in. 

“I looked back over my shoulder, and sees High Jack’s 
face three feet away. 

“ ^High,’ says I, ‘of all the ’ 


142 Options 

‘‘And then I noticed he looked funny, and I turned 
around. 

“He’d taken off his clothes to the waist, and he didn’t 
seem to hear me. I touched him, and came near beating 
it. High Jack had turned to stone. I had been drink- 
ing some rum myself. 

“ ‘Ossified !’ I says to him, loudly. ‘I knew what would 
happen if you kept it up.’ 

“And then High Jack comes in from the alcove when he 
hears me conversing with nobody, and we have a look at 
Mr. Snakefeeder No. 2. It’s a stone idol, or god, or re- 
vised statute or something, and it looks as much like High 
Jack as one green pea looks like itself. It’s got exactly 
his face and size and color, but it’s steadier on its pins. 
It stands on a kind of rostrum or pedestal, and you can 
see it’s been there ten million years. 

“ ‘He’s a cousin of mine,’ sings High, and then he 
turns solemn. 

“ ‘Hunky,’ he says, putting one hand on my shoulder 
and one on the statue’s, ‘I’m in the holy temple of my 
ancestors.’ 

“‘Well, if looks goes for anything,’ says I, ‘you’ve 
struck a twin. Stand side by side with buddy, and let’s 
see if there’s any difference.’ 

“There wasn’t. You know an Indian can keep his face 
as still as an iron dog’s when he wants to, so when High 
Jack froze his features you couldn’t have told him from 
the other one. 

“ ‘There’s some letters,’ says I, ‘on his nob’s pedestal. 


He Also Serves 


143 


but I can’t make ’em out. The alpliabet of this country 
seems to be composed of sometimes a, e, i, o, and w, gen- 
erally, z*s Vs, and 

‘‘High Jack’s ethnology gets the upper hand of his 
rum for a minute, and he investigates tlic inscription. 

“ ‘Hunky,’ says he, ‘this is a statue of Tlotopaxl, one 
of the most powerful gods of the ancient Aztecs.’ 

“ ‘Glad to know him,’ says I, ‘but in his present con- 
dition he reminds me of the joke Shakespeare got off on 
Julius Caesar. We might say about your friend: 

“ ‘Imperious What’s his-iiame, dead and turned to stone — 
No use to write or call him on the phone.’ 

“ ‘Hunky,’ says High Jack Snakefeeder, looking at me 
funny, ‘do you believe in reincarnation?’ 

“ ‘It sounds to me,’ says I, ‘like either a clean-up of the 
slaughter-houses or a new kind of Boston pink. I don’t 
know,’ 

“ ‘I believe,’ says he, ‘that I am the reincarnation of 
Tlotopaxl. My researches have convinced me that the 
Cherokees, of all the North American tribes, can boast of 
the straightest descent from the proud Aztec race. 
That,’ says lie, ‘was a favorite theory of mine and Flor- 
ence Blue Feather’s. And she — what if she ” 

“High Jack grabs my arm and walls his eyes at me. 
Just then he looked more like his eminent co-Indian mur- 
derer, Crazy Horse. 

“‘Well,’ says I, ‘what if she, what if she, what if she? 
You’re drunk,’ says I. ‘Impersonating idols and bdiev- 


144 Options 

iiig in — what was it? — recarnalization? Let’s have a 
drink,’ says L ^It’s as spooky here as a Brooklyn arti- 
ficial-limb factory at midnight with the gas turned down.’ 

‘^Just then I heard somebody coming, and I dragged 
High Jack into the bedless bedchamber. There was 
peepholes bored through the wall, so we could see the 
wdiole front part of the temple. Major Bing told me 
afterward that the ancient priests in charge used to rub- 
ber through them at the congregation. 

^Tn a few minutes an old Indian woman came in with a 
big oval earthen dish full of grub. She set it on a square 
block of stone in front of the graven image, and laid 
down and walloped her face on the floor a few times, ani 
then took a walk for herself. 

^‘High Jack and me was hungry, so we came out and 
looked it over. There was goat steaks and fried rice- 
cakes, and plantains and cassava, and broiled land-crabs 
and mangoes — nothing like what you get at Chubb’s. 

^‘We ate hearty — and had another round of rum. 

Tt must be old Tecumseh’s — or whatever you call 
him — birthday,’ sa3^s I. ^Or do they feed him every 
day? I thought gods only drank vanilla on Mount 
Catawampus.’ 

‘^Then some more native parties in short kimonos that 
showed their aboriginees puncture the near-horizon, and 
me and High had to skip back into Father Axletree’s 
private boudoir. They came by ones, twos, and threes, 
and left all sorts of offerings — there was enough grub for 
Bingham’s nine gods of war, with plenty left over for the 


He Also Serves 


145 


Peace Conference at The Hague, They brought jars of 
honey, and bunches of bananas, and bottles of wine, and 
stacks of tortillas, and beautiful shawls worth one hun- 
dred dollars apiece that the Indian w^omen wxave of a kind 
of vegetable fibre like silk. All of ’em got dowm and wrig- 
gled on the floor in front of that hard-finish god, and 
then sneaked off* through the woods again. 

wonder w^ho gets this rake-off*.^’ remarks High 

Jack. 

‘Oh,’ says I, ‘there’s priests or deputy idols or a com- 
mittee of disarrangements somewhere in the w oods on the 
job. Wherever you find a god 3^ou’ll find somebody wait- 
ing to take charge of the burnt offerings.’ 

“And then we took another swdg of rum and walked out 
to the parlor front door to cool off*, for it was as hot in- 
side as a summer camp on the Palisades. 

“And while w^e stood there in the breeze w^e looks down 
the path and sees a young lady approaching the blasted 
ruin. She w'as barefooted and had on a white robe, and 
carried a wreath of w^hite flow-ers in her hand. When she 
got nearer we saw^ she had a long blue feather stuck 
through her black hair. And wdien she got nearer still 
me and High Jack Snakefeeder grabbed each other to 
keep from tumbling down on the floor ; for the girl’s face 
was as much like Florence Blue Feather’s as his w^as like 
old King Toxlcologj^’s. 

“And then w^as when High Jack’s booze drowmed his 
sj/stem of ethnology. He dragged me inside back of the 
statue, and says : 


146 Options 

^Lay hold of it, Hunky. We’ll pack it into the other 
room. I felt it all the time,’ says he. ‘I’m the recon- 
sideration of the god Locomotor-ataxia, and Florence 
Blue Feather was my bride a thousand years ago. She 
has come to seek me in the temple where I used to 
reign.’ 

“ ‘All right,’ says 1. ‘There’s no use arguing against 
the rum question. You take his feet.’ 

“We lifted the three-hundred-pound stone god, and 
carried him into the back room of the cafe — the temple, 
I mean — and leaned him against the wall. It was 
more work than bouncing three live ones from an all- 
night Broadway joint on New-Year’s Eve. 

“Then High Jack ran out and brought in a couple 
of them Indian silk shawls and began to undress him- 
self. 

“ ‘Oh, figs !’ says I. ‘Is it thus ? Strong drink is an 
adder and subtractor, too. Is it tlie heat or the call of 
the wild that’s got you.^’ 

“But High Jack is too full of exaltation and cane-juice 
to reply. He stops the disrobing business just short of 
the Manhattan Beach rules, and then winds them red- 
and-white shawls around him, and goes out and stands on 
the pedestal as steady as any platinum deity you ever saw. 
And I looks through a peek-hole to see what he is up to. 

“In a few’ minutes in comes the girl w’itli the flower 
wreath. Danged if I w’asn’t knocked a little silly when 
she got close, she looked so exactly much like Florence 
Blue Feather. ‘I wonder,’ says I to myself, ‘if she has 


He Also Serves 


147 


been reincarcerated, too? If I could see,’ says I to my- 
self, Svhether she has a mole on her left — ’ But the 
next minute I thought she looked one eighth of a 
shade darker than F lorence ; but she looked good at 
that. And Higt^J ack hadn’t drunk all the rum that had 
been drank. \ 

‘‘The girl went up within ten feet of the bum idol, and 
got down and massaged her nose with the floor, like the 
rest did. Then she went nearer and laid the flower wTeath 
on the block of stone at High Jack’s feet. Kummy as I 
was, I thought it was kind of nice of her to think of 
offering flowers instead of household and kitchen provi- 
sions. Even a stone god ought to appreciate a little 
sentiment like that on top of the fancy groceries they 
had piled up in front of him. 

“And then High Jack steps down from his pedestal, 
quiet, and mentions a few words that sounded just like 
the hierogl3’^phics carved on the w'alls of the ruin. The 
girl gives a little jump backward, and her ej^es fly open 
as big as doughnuts ; but she don’t beat it. 

“Why didn’t she? I’ll tell you why I think why. It 
don’t seem to a girl so supernatural, unlikely, strange, 
and startling that a stone god should come to life for her. 
If he w^as to do it for one of them snub-nosed brown girls 
on the other side of the woods, now> it would be different 
— but her! I’ll bet she said to herself : ‘Well, goodness 
me! you’ve been a long time getting on your job. I’ve 
half a mind not to speak to you.’ 

“But she and High Jack holds hands and walks away 


148 Options 

out of the temple together. By the time I’d had time to 
take another drink and enter upon the scene they was 
twenty yards away, going up the path in the w^oods that 
the girl had come down. With the natural scenery al- 
ready in place, it was just like a play to watch ’em — she 
looking up at him, and him giving her back the best that 
an Indian can hand out in the way of a goo-goo eye. 
But there w^asn’t anything in that recarnification and 
revulsion to tintype for me. 

^Hey ! Injun !’ I yells out to High Jack. ‘We’ve got 
a board-bill due in town, and you’re leaving me without a 
cent. Brace up and cut out the Neapolitan fisher- 
maiden, and let’s go back home.’ 

“But on the two goes without looking once back until, 
as you might say, the forest swallowed ’em up. And I 
never saw or heard of High Jack Snakefeeder from that 
day to this, I don’t know if the Cherokees came from 
the Aspics ; but if they did, one of ’em went back. 

“All I could do was to hustle back to that Boca place 
and panhandle Major Bing. He detached himself from 
enough of his winnings to buy me a ticket home. And 
I’m back again on the job at Chubb’s, sir, and I’m going 
to hold it steady. Come round, and you’ll find the steaks 
as good as ever.” 

I wondered what Hunky Magee thought about his own 
story ; so I asked him if he had any theories about rein- 
carnation and transmogrification and such mysteries as 
he had touched upon. 

“Nothing like that,” said Hunky, positively. “What 


He Also Serves 149 

ailed High Jack was too much booze and education. 
They’ll do an Indian up every time.” 

‘‘But what about Miss Blue Feather?” I persisted. 
“Say,” said Hunky, with a grin, “that little lady that 
stole High Jack certainly did give me a jar when I first 
took a look at her, but it w’^as only for a minute. You 
remember I told you High Jack said that Miss Florence 
Blue Feather disappeared from home about a year ago? 
Well, where she landed four days later was in as neat a 
five-room flat on East Twenty-third Street as you ever 
walked sideways through — and she’s been Mrs. Magee 
ever since.” 


THE MOMENT OF VICTORY 


Ben GRANGER is a war veteran aged twenty-nine — 
which should enable you to guess the war. He is also 
principal merchant and postmaster of Cadiz, a little town 
over which the breezes from the Gulf of Mexico perpet- 
ually blow. 

Ben helped to hurl the Don from his stronghold in the 
Greater Antilles ; and then, hiking across half tlie world, 
he marched as a corporal-usher up and down the blazing 
tropic aisles of the open-air college in which the Filipino 
was schooled. Now, with his bayonet beaten into a cheese 
slicer, he rallies his corporal’s guard of cronies in the 
shade of his well-whittled porch, instead of in the matted 
jungles of Mindanao. Always have his interest and 
choice been for deeds rather than for words ; but the 
consideration and digestion of motives is not beyond him, 
as this story, which is his, will attest. 

^‘What is it,” he asked me one moonlit eve, as we sat 
among his boxes and barrels, ^Hhat generally makes men 
go through dangers,. and fire, and trouble, and starvation, 
and battle, and such recourses? What does a man do it 
for? Why does he try to outdo his fellow-humans, and 
be braver and stronger and more daring and showy than 
even his best friends are ? What’s his game ? What does 
he expect to get out of it? He don’t do it just for the 
150 


151 


The Moment of Victory 

fresh air and exercise. What would you say, now, Bill, 
that an ordinary man expects, generally speaking, for 
his efforts along the line of ambition and extraordinary 
hustling in the market-places, forums, shooting-galleries, 
lyceums, battlefields, links, cinder-paths, and arenas of 
the civilized and vice versa places of the world?” 

“Well, Ben,” said I, with judicial seriousness, “I think 
we might safely limit the number of motives of a man who 
seeks fame to three — to ambition, which is a desire for 
popular applause ; to avarice, which looks to the material 
side of success ; and to love of some woman whom he 
either possesses or desires to possess.” 

Ben pondered over my words while a mocking-bird on 
the top of a mesquite by the porch trilled a dozen bars. 

“I reckon,” said he, “that your diagnosis about cov- 
ers the case according to the rules laid down in the copy- 
books and historical readers. But what I had in my 
mind was the case of Willie Robbins, a person I used to 
know. I’ll tell you about him before I close up the store, 
if you don’t mind listening. 

“Willie was one of our social set up in San Augustine. 
I was clerking there then for Brady & ^Murchison, whole- 
sale dry-goods and ranch supplies. Willie and I be- 
longed to the same german club and athletic association 
and military company. He played the triangle in our 
serenading and quartet crowd that used to ring the wel- 
kin three nights a week somewhere in town. 

^‘Willie jibed with his name considerable. He weighed 
about as much as a hundred pounds of veal in his summer 


152 Options 

suitings, and lie had a Where-is-Mary ? expression on 
his features so plain that you could almost see the wool 
growing on him. 

‘^And yet you couldn’t fence him away from the girls 
with barbed wire. You know that kind of young fellows 
— a kind of a mixture of fools and angels — they rush in 
and fear to tread at the same time ; but they never fail to 
tread when they get the chance. He was always on hand 
when ^a joyful occasion was had,’ as the morning paper 
Tvould say, looking as happy as a king full, and at the 
same time as uncomfortable as a raw oj^ster served with 
sweet pickles. He danced like he had hind hobbles on ; 
and he had a vocabulary of about three hundred and fifty 
words that he made stretch over four gcrmans a week, 
and plagiarized from to get him through two ice-cream 
suppers and a Sunday-night call. He seemed to me to 
be a sort of a mixture of Maltese kitten, sensitive plant, 
and a member of a stranded ^Two Orphans’ company. 

^^I’ll give you an estimate of his physiological and pic- 
torial make-up and then I’ll stick spurs into the sides of 
my narrative. 

^^Willie inclined to the Caucasian in his coloring and 
manner of style. His hair was opalescent and his con- 
versation fragmentary. His eyes were the same blue 
shade as the china dog’s on the right-hand corner of your 
Aunt Ellen’s mantelpiece. He took things as they came, 
and I never felt any hostility against him. I let him live, 
and so did others. 

^^But what does this Willie do but coax his heart out 


153 


The Moment of Victory 

of his boots and lose it to Myra Allison, the liveliest, 
brightest, keenest, smartest, and prettiest girl in San 
Augustine. I tell you, she had the blackest eyes, the 
shiniest curls, and the most tantalizing — Oh, no you’re 
off — I wasn’t a victim. I might have been, but I knew 
better. I kept out. Joe Cranberry was It from the 
start. He had everybody else beat a couple of leagues 
and thence east to a stake and mound. But, anyhow, 
Myra was sl * nine-pound, full-merino, fall-clip fleece, 
sacked and loaded on a four-horse team for San Antone. 

‘‘One night there w^as an ice-cream sociable at Mrs. 
Colonel Spraggins’, in San Augustine. We fellows had a 
big room upstairs opened up for us to put our hats and 
things in, and to comb our hair and put on the clean col- 
lars we brought along inside the sweat-bands of our hats 
— in short, a room to fix up in just like they have every- 
where at high-toned doings. A little farther down the 
hall was the girls’ room, wdiich they used to powder up in, 
and so forth. Downstairs we — that is, the San Augus- 
tine Social Cotillion and Merrymakers’ Club — had a 
stretcher put down in the parlor where our dance was go- 
ing on. 

“Willie Robbins and me happened to be up in our — 
cloak-room, I believe we called it — when Myra Allison 
skipped through the hall on her way dowmstairs from the 
girls’ room. Willie was standing before the mirror, 
deeply interested in smoothing down the blond grass-plot 
on his head, which seemed to give him lots of trouble. 
Myra was always full of life and devilment. She stopped 


154 } Options 

and stuck her head in our door. She certainly was good- 
looking. But I-knew how Joe Granbei ry stood with her. 
So did Willie ; but he kept on ba-a-a-ing after her and 
following her around. He had a sj^stem of persistence 
that didn’t coincide with pale hair and light eyes. 

‘Hello, Willie !’ says Myra. ‘What are you doing 
to yourself in the glass?’ 

“ ‘I’m trying to look fly,’ says Willie. 

“‘Well, you never could he fly,’ says Myra with her 
special laugh, which was the provokingest sound I ever 
heard except the rattle of an empty canteen against my 
saddle-horn. 

“I looked around at Willie after Myra had gone. He 
had a kind of a lllj^-white look on him wliicli seemed to 
show that her remark had, as you might say, disrupted 
his soul. I never noticed anything in W'hat she said that 
sounded particularly destructive to a man’s ideas of self- 
consciousness ; but he was set back to an extent you could 
scarcely imagine. 

“After we went downstairs wuth our clean collars on, 
Willie never w^ent near Myra again that night. After all, 

he seemed to be a diluted kind of a skim-milk sort of a 

/ 

chap, and I never wondered that Joe Granberry beat 
him out. 

“The next day the battleship Mciin^ was blown up, 
and then pretty soon somebody — I reckon it was Joe 
Bailey, or Ben Tillman, or maybe the Government — 
declared war against Spain. 

“Well, ever3"body south of Mason & Hamlin’s line 
knew that the North by itself couldn’t whip a whole 


155 


The Moment of Victory 

country the size of Spain. So the Yankees commenced 
to holler for help, and the Johnny Rebs answered the 
call. ‘We’re coming, Father William, a hundred thou- 
sand strong — and then some,’ was the way they sang it. 
And the old party lines drawn by Sherman’s march and 
the Kuklux and nine-cent cotton and the Jim Crow street- 
car ordinances faded away. We became one undivided 
country, with no North, very little East, a good-sized 
chunk of West, and a South that loomed up as big as the 
first foreign label in a new eight-dollar suitcase. 

“Of course the dogs of war weren’t a complete pack 
without a yelp from the San Augustine Rifles, Company 
D, of the Fourteenth Texas Regiment. Our company 
was among the first to land in Cuba and strike terror into 
the hearts of the foe. I’m not going to give you a his- 
tory of the war; I’m just dragging it in to fill out my 
story about Willie Robbins, just as the Republican 
party dragged it in to help out the election in 1898. 

“If anybody ever had heroitis, it was that Willie Rob- 
bins. From the minute he set foot on the soil of the 
tyrants of Castile he seemed to engulf danger as a cat 
laps up cream. He certainly astonished every man in 
our company, from the captain up. You’d have expected 
him to gravitate naturally to the job of an orderly to the 
colonel, or typewriter in the commissary — but not any. 
He created the part of the flaxen-haired boy hero who 
lives and gets back home with the goods, instead of dying 
with an important despatch in his hands at his colonel’s 
feet. 


156 Options 

^‘Our company got into a section of Cuban scenery 
where one of the messiest and most unsung portions of 
the campaign occurred. We were out every day capering 
around in the bushes, and having little skirmishes with 
the Spanish troops that looked more like kiiid of tired- 
out feuds than anything else. The war was a joke to us, 
and of no interest to them. We never could see it any 
other way than as a howling farce-comedy that the San 
Augustine Rifles were actually fighting to uphold the 
Stars and Stripes. And the blamed little sefiors didn’t 
get enough pay to make them care whether they were 
patriots or traitors. Now and then somebody would get 
killed. It seemed like a waste of life to me. I was at 
Coney Island when I went to New York once, and one of 
them down-hill skidding apparatuses they call ^roller- 
coasters’ flew the track and killed a man in a brown sack- 
suit. Whenever the Spaniards shot one of our men, it 
struck me as just about as unnecessary and ixigrettable 
as that was. 

‘‘But I’m dropping Willie Robbins out of the con- 
versation. 

“He was out for bloodshed, laurels, ambitions, medals, 
recommendations, and all other forms of military glory. 
And he didn’t seem to be afraid of any of the recognized 
forms of military danger, such as Spaniards, cannon- 
balls, canned beef, gunpowder, or nepotism. He went 
forth with his pallid hair and china-blue eyes and ate up 
Spaniards like you would sardines a la canopy. Wars 
and rumbles of wars never flustered him. He would stand 


157 


The Moment of Victory 

guard-duty, mosquitoes, hardtack, treat, and fire with 
equally perfect unanimity. No blondes in history ever 
come in comparison distance of him except the Jack of 
Diamonds and Queen Catherine of Russia. 

r^nember, one time, a little caballard of Spanish men 
sauntered out from behind a patch of sugar-cane and shot 
Bob Turner, the first sergeant of our company, while we 
were eating dinner. As required by the army regulations, 
we fellows went tlirough the usual tactics of falling into 
line, saluting the enemy, and loading and firing, kneeling. 

^•That wasn’t the Texas way of scrapping ; but, being 
a very important addendum and annex to the regular 
army, the San Augustine Rifles had to confirm to tlie 
red-tape S3^stem of getting even. 

^^By the time we had got out our ‘Upton’s Tactics,’ 
turned to page fifty-seven, said ‘one — two — three — 
one — two — three’ a couple of times, and got blank car- 
tridges into our Springfields, tlie Spanish outfit had 
smiled repeatedly, rolled and lit cigarettes by squads, 
and walked away contemptuously. 

“I went straight to Captain Floyd, and says to him : 
‘Sam, I don’t think this war is a straight game. You 
know as well as I do that Bob Turner was one of the whit- 
est fellows that ever threw a leg over a saddle, and now 
these wire-pullers in Washington have fixed his clock. 
He’s politically and ostensibly dead. It ain’t fair. Why 
should they keep this thing up.^ If they want Spain 
licked, why don’t they turn the San Augustine Rifles and 
Joe Seely’s ranger company and a carload of West Texas 


158 Options 

deputy-sheriffs on to these Spaniards, and let us exoner- 
ate them from the face of the earth? I never did,’ says I, 
‘care much about fighting by the Lord Chesterfield ring 
rules. I’m going to hand in my resignation and go home 
if anybody else I am personally acquainted with gets hurt 
in this war. If you can get somebody in my place, Sam,’ 
says I, ‘I’ll quit the first of next week. I don’t want to 
work in an army that don’t give its help a chance. Never 
mind my wages,’ says I ; ‘let the Secretary of the Treas- 
ury keep ’em.’ 

“ ‘Well, Ben,’ says the captain to me, ‘your allegations 
and estimations of the tactics of war, government, pa- 
triotism, guard-mounting, and democracy are all right. 
But I’ve looked into the system of international arbitra- 
tion and the ethics of justifiable slaughter a little closer, 
maybe, than you have. Now, you can hand in your 
resignation the first of next week if you are so minded. 
But if you do,’ says Sam, ‘I’ll order a corporal’s guard to 
take you over by that limestone bluff on the creek and 
shoot enough lead into you to ballast a submarine air- 
ship. I’m captain of this company, and I’ve swore al- 
legiance to the Amalgamated States regardless of sec- 
tional, secessional, and Congressional differences. Have 
you got any smoking-tobacco?’ winds up Sam. ‘Mine 
got wet when I swum the creek this morning.’ 

“The reason I drag all this non ex parte evidence in is 
because Willie Robbins was standing there listening to us. 
I was a second sergeant and he was a private then, but 
among us Texans and Westerners there never was as 


159 


The Moment of Victory 

umch tactics and subordination as there was in the regu- 
lar army. We never called our captain anything but 
‘Sam’ except when there was a lot of maj or-generals and 
admirals around, so as to preserve the discipline. 

“And says Willie Robbins to me, in a sharp construc- 
tion of voice much unbecoming to his light hair and pre- 
vious record: 

“‘You ought to be shot, Ben, for emitting any such 
sentiments. A man that won’t fight for his country is 
worse than a horse-thief. If I was the cap, I’d put you 
in the guard-house for thirty days on round steak and 
tamales. War,’ says Willie, ‘is great and glorious. I 
didn’t know you were a coward.’ 

“ ‘I’m not,’ says I. ‘If I was, I’d knock some of the 
pallidness off your marble brow. I’m lenient with you,’ 
I says, ‘just as I am with the Spaniards, because you have 
always reminded me of something with mushrooms on the 
side. Why, you little Lady of Shalott,’ says I, ‘you under- 
done leader of cotillions, you glassy fashion and moulded 
form, you white-pine soldier made in the Cisalpine Alps 
in Germany for the late New-Year trade, do you know of 
whom you are talking to ? We’ve been in the same social 
circle,’ says I, ‘and I’ve put up with you because you 
seemed so meek and self-unsatisfying. I don’t under- 
stand why you have so sudden taken a personal interest 
in chivalrousness and murder. Your nature’s under- 
gone a complete revelation. Now, how is it?’ 

“‘Well, you w^ouldn’t understand, Ben,’ says Willie, 
giving one of his refined smiles and turning away. 


160 Options 

^Cotwe back here !’ says I, catching him by the tail of 
his khaki coat. ‘You’ve made me kind of mad, in spite 
of the aloofness in which I have heretofore held you. You 
are out for making a success in this hero business, and I 
believe I know what for. You are doing it either because 
you are crazy or because you expect to catch some girl by 
it. Now, if it’s a girl, I’ve got something here to show 
you.’ 

“I wouldn’t have done it, but I was plumb mad. I 
pulled a San Augustine paper out of my hip-poeket, and 
showed him an item. It was a half a column about the 
marriage of Myra Allison and Joe Granberry. 

“Willie laughed, and I saw I hadn’t touched him. 

“‘Oh,’ says he, ‘everybody knew tliat was going to 
happen. I heard about that a week ago.’ And then he 
gave me the laugh again. 

“ ‘All right,’ says I. ‘Then why do you so recklessly 
chase the bright rainbow of fame? Do you expect to be 
elected President, or do you belong to a suicide club.?’ 

“And then Captain Sam interferes. 

“‘You gentlemen quit jawing and go back to your 
quarters,’ says he, ‘or I’ll have you escorted to the guard- 
house. Now, scat, both of you ! Before you go, which 
one of you has got any chewing-tobacco?’ 

“ ‘We’re off, Sam, says I. ‘It’s supper-time, anyhow. 
But what do you think of what wx was talking about? 
I’ve noticed you throwing out a good many grappling- 
hooks for this here balloon called fame — What’s am- 
bition, anyhow ? What does a man risk his life day after 
day for? Do you know of anything he gets in the end 


161 


The Moment of Victory 

that can pay him for the trouble? I want to go back 
home,’ says I. don’t care whether Cuba sinks or swims, 
and I don’t give a pipeful of rabbit tobacco whether 
Queen Sophia Christina or Charlie Culberson rules these 
fairy isks ; and I don’t want my name on any list except 
the list of survivors. But I’ve noticed you, Sam,’ says 
I, ^seeking the bubble of notoriety in the cannon’s larynx 
a number of times. Now, what do you do it for? Is it 
ambition, business, or some freckle-faced Phoebe at home 
that you are heroing for?’ 

« ‘Well, Ben,’ says Sam, kind of hefting his sword out 
from between his knees, ^as your superior officer I could 
court-martial j’ou for attempted cow^ardice and deser- 
tion. But I w'on’t. And I’ll tell you why I’m trying 
for promotion and the usual honors of w^ar and conquest. 
A major gets more pay than a captain, and I need the 
money.’ 

‘‘ ‘Correct for you !’ says I. ‘I can understand that. 
Your system of fame-seeking is rooted in the deepest soil 
of patriotism. But I can’t comprehend,’ says I, ‘why 
Willie Robbins, wdiose folks at home are w^ell off, and w^ho 
used to be as meek and undesirous of notice as a cat with 
cream on his wdiiskers, should all at once develop into a 
warrior bold with the most fire-eating kind of proclivi- 
ties. And the girl in his case seems to have been elim- 
inated by marriage to another fellow. I reckon,’ says 
I, ‘it’s a plain case of just common ambition. He wants 
his name, maybe, to go thundering down the coroners of 
time. It must be that.’ 

“Well, without itemii&mg his deeds, WUlie sare made 


162 


Options 

good as a hero. He simply spent most of his time on his 
knees begging our captain to send him on forlorn hopes 
and dangerous scouting expeditions. In every fight he 
was the first man to mix it at close quarters with the Don 
Alfonsos. He got three or four bullets planted in various 
parts of his autonomy. Once he went off with a detail of 
eight men and captured a whole company of Spanish. He 
kept Captain Floyd busy writing out recommendations 
of his bravery to send in to headquarters ; and he began to 
accumulate medals for all kinds of things — heroism and 
target-shooting and valor and tactics and uninsubordina- 
tion, and all the little accomplishments that look good to 
the third assistant secretaries of the War Department. 

‘‘Finally, Cap Floyd got promoted to be a major- 
general, or a knight commander of the main herd, or 
something like that. He pounded around on a white 
horse, all desecrated up with gold-leaf and hen-feathers 
and a Good Templar’s hat, and w^asn’t allowed by the 
regulations to speak to us. And Willie Robbins was 
made captain of our company, 

“And maybe he didn’t go after the w^reath of fame then 5 
As far as I could see it was him that ended the war. He 
got eighteen of us boys — friends of his, too — killed in 
battles that he stirred up himself and that didn’t seem to 
me necessary at all. One night he took twelve of us and 
waded through a little rill about a hundred and ninety 
yards wude, and climbed a couple of mountains, and 
sneaked through a mile of neglected shrubbery and a 
couple of rock-quarries and into a rye-straw village, and 
captured a Spanish general named, as they said, Benny 


163 


The 3Ioment of Victory 

Veedus. Benny seemed to me hardly worth the trouble, 
being a blackish man without shoes or cuffs, and anxious 
to surrender and throw himself on the commissary of 
his foe. 

“But that job gave Willie the big boost he wanted. 
The San Augustine News and the Galveston, St. Louis, 
New York, and Kansas City papers printed his picture 
and columns of stuff about him. Old San Augustine sim- 
ply went crazy over its ^gallant son.’ The News had an 
editorial tearfully begging the Government to call off the 
regular army and the national guard, and let Willie carry 
on the rest of the war single-handed. It said that a re- 
fusal to do so would be regarded as a proof that the 
Northern jealousy of the South was still as rampant as 
ever. 

“If the war hadn’t ended pretty soon, I don’t know to 
what heights of gold braid and encomiums Willie would 
have climbed ; but it did. There was a secession of hos- 
tilities just three days after he was appointed a colonel, 
and got in three more medals by registered mail and shot 
two Spaniards while they were drinking lemonade in an 
ambuscade. 

“Our company went back to San Augustine when the 
war was over. There wasn’t anywhere else for it to go. 
And what do you think.? The old town notified us in 
print, by wire cable, special delivery, and a nigger named 
Saul sent on a gray mule to San Antone, that they was 
going to give us the biggest blowout, complimentary, ali- 
mentary, and elementary, that ever disturbed the kildees 


164 Options 

on the sand-flats outside of the immediate contiguity of 
the city. 

say Sve,’ but it was all meant for ex-Private, Cap- 
tain de facto, and Colonel-elect Willie Robbins. The 
town was crazy about him. They notified us that the 
reception they were going to put up would make the 
Mardi Gras in New Orleans look like an afternoon tea in 
Bury St. Edmonds with a curate’s aunt. 

^‘Well, the San Augustine Rifles got back home on 
schedule time. Everybody was at the depot giving forth 
Roosevelt-Democrat — they used to be called Rebel — 
yells. There was two brass-bands, and the mayor, and 
schoolgirls in white frightening the street-car horses by 
throwing Cherokee roses in the streets, and — well, may- 
be you’ve seen a celebration by a town that was inland 
and out of water. 

^^They wanted Brevet-Colonel Willie to get into a 
carriage and be drawm by prominent citizens and some of 
the city aldermen to the armory, but he stuck to his com- 
pany and marched at the head of it up Sam Houston 
Avenue. The buildings on both sides was covered wuth 
flags and audiences, and everybody hollered ‘Robbias!’ 
or ‘Hello, Willie !’ as we marched up in files of fours. I 
never saw a illustriouser-looking human in my life than 
Willie was. He had at least seven or eight medals and 
diplomas and decorations on the breast of his khaki coat ; 
he was sunburnt the color of a saddle, and he certainly 
done himself proud. 

“They told us at the depot that the courthouse was to 
be illuminated at half-pas-t seven, and theix; vcmld be 


165 


The Moment of Victory 

speeches and chili-con-carne at the Palace Hotel. Miss 
Delphine Thompson was to read an original poem by 
James Whitcomb Ryan, and Constable Hooker had 
promised us a salute of nine guns from Chicago that he 
had arrested that day. 

^‘After we had disbanded in the armory, Willie says to 
me: 

‘Want to walk out a piece with me?’ 

« ^Why, yes,’ says I, ‘if it ain’t so far that we can’t 
hear the tumult and the shouting die away. I’m hungry 
myself,’ says I, ‘and I’m pining for some home grub, but 
I’ll go vdth you.’ 

“Willie steered me down some side streets till we came 
to a little white cottage in a new lot with a twenty-by- 
thirty-foot lawn decorated with brickbats and old bar- 
l*el-staves. 

‘“Halt and give the countersign,’ says I to Willie. 
'‘Don’t 3’ou know this dugout? It’s the bird’s-nest that 
Joe Cranberry built before he married Myra Allison. 
What 3mu going there for?’ 

“But Willie alreadj^ had the gate open. He walked up 
the brick w’alk to the steps, and I w^ent with him. Myra 
was sitting in a rocking-chair on the porch, sewung. Pier 
hair w^as smoothed back kind of hasty and tied in a knot. 
I never noticed till then that she had freckles. Joe was 
at one side of the porch, in his shirt-sleeves, with no collar 
on, and no signs of a shave, trying to scrape out a hole 
among the brickbats and tin cans to plant a little fruit- 
tree in. He looked up but never said a word, and neither 
did Myra. 


166 Options 

^‘Willie was sure dandy-looking in his uniform, with 
medals strung on his breast and his new gold-handled 
sword. You’d never have taken him for the little white- 
headed snipe that the girls used to order about and make 
fun of. He just stood there for a minute, looking at 
Myra with a peculiar little smile on his face ; and then he 
sa3^s to her, slow, and kind of holding on to his words with 
his teeth : 

“ ‘OA, I don't Tcnow! Maybe I could if I tried!' 

‘‘That was all that was said. Willie raised his hat, 
and we walked away. 

“And, somehow, when he said that, I remembered, all 
of a sudden, the night of that dance and Willie brushing 
his hair before the looking-glass, and Myra sticking her 
head in the door to guy him. 

“When we got back to Sam Houston Avenue, Willie 
says : 

. “ ‘Well, so long, Ben. I’m going down home and get 
off my shoes and take a rest.’ 

“ ‘You r saj^s I. ‘What’s the matter with you? Ain’t 
the courthouse jammed with everybody in town’ waiting 
to honor the hero ? And two brass-bands, and recitations 
and flags and jags, and grub to follow waiting for you?^ 

“Willie sig hs. 

“ ‘All right, Ben,’ says he. ‘Darned if I didn’t forget 
all about that.’ 

“And that’s wiiy I say,” concluded Ben Granger, “that 
you can’t tell where ambition begins any more than you 
can where it is going to wind up.” 


THE HEAD-HUNTER 


W HEN the war between Spain and George Dewey was 
over, I went to the Philippine Islands. There I remained 
as bush-whacker correspondent for my paper until its 
managing editor notified me that an eight-hundred-word 
cablegram describing the grief of a pet carabao over the 
death of an infant Moro was not considered by the office 
to be war news. So I resigned, and came home. 

On board the trading-vessel that brought me back I 
pondered much upon the strange things I had sensed in 
the weird archipelago of the yellow-brown people. The 
manoeuvres and skirmishings of the petty war interested 
me not : I was spellbound by the outlandish and unread- 
able countenance of that race that had turned its expres- 
sionless gaze upon us out of an unguessable past. 

Particularly during my stay in Mindanao had I been 
fascinated and attracted by that delightfully original 
tribe of heathen known as the head-hunters. Those grim, 
flinty, relentless little men, never seen, but chilling the 
warmest noonday by the subtle terror of their concealed 
presence, paralleling the trail of their prey through 
unmapped forests, across perilous mountain-tops, adown 
bottomless chasms, into uninhabitable jungles, always 
near with the invisible hand of death uplifted, betraying 
their pursuit only by such signs as a beast or a bird or a 

m 


168 Options 

gliding serpent might make — a twig crackling in the 
awful sweat-soaked night, a drench of dew showering from 
the screening foliage of a giant tree, a whisper at even 
from the rushes of a w'ater-level — a hint of death for 
every mile and every hour — they amused me greatly, 
those little fellows of one idea. 

When you think of it, their method is beautifully and 
almost hilariously effective and simple. 

You have your hut in which you live and carry out the 
destiny that was decreed for yom. Spiked to the j amb ©f 
yo«T bamboo doorway is a basket made of green withes, 
plaited. From time to time as vanity or ennui or love or 
jealousy or ambition may move j^ou, you creep forth 
with your snickersnee and take up the silent trail. Back 
from it you come, triumphant, bearing the severed, gory 
head of your victim, which you deposit with pardonable 
pride in the basket at the side of your door. It may be 
the head of your enemy, your friend, or a straiiger, ac- 
cording as competition, jealousy, or simple sportiveness 
has been your incentive to labor. 

In any case, your reward is certain. The village men, 
in passing, stop to congratulate you, as your neighbor on 
weaker planes of life stops to admire and praise the bego- 
nias in your front yard. Your particular brown maid 
lingers, with fluttering bosom, casting soft tiger’s eyes at 
the evidence of your love for her. You chew betel-nut 
and listen, content, to the intermittent soft drip from the 
ends of the severed neck arteries. And you show your 
teeth and grunt like a water-buffalo — which is as near 


The Head'TIunter 


169 


as you can come to laughing — at the thought that the 
cold, acephalous body of your door ornament is being 
spotted by wheeling vultures in the Mindjin-aoan wilds. 

Truly, the life of the merry head-hunter captivated me. 
He had reduced art and philosophy to a simple code. To 
take your adversary’s head, to basket it at the portal of 
your castle, to see it lying there, a dead thing, with its 
cunning and stratagems and power gone — Is there a 
better way to foil his plots, to refute his arguments, to 
establish your superiority over his skill and wisdom? 

The ship that brought me home was captained by an 
erratic Swede, who changed his course and deposited me, 
with genuine compassion, in a small town on the Pacific 
coast of one of the Central American republics, a few' 
hundred miles south of the port to which he had engaged 
to convey me. But I was wearied of movement and exotic 
fancies ; so I leaped contentedly upon the firm sands of 
the village of Mojada, telling myself I should be sure to 
find there the rest that I craved. After all, far better to 
linger there (I thought), lulled by the sedative plash of 
the waves and the rustling of palm-fronds, than to sit 
upon the horsehair sofa of my parental home in the East, 
and there, cast down by currant wine and cake, and 
scourged by fatuous relatives, drivel into the ears of gap- 
ing neighbors sad stories of the death of colonial gov- 
ernors. 

When first I saw Chloe Greene she was standing, all in 
white, in the doorway of her father’s tile-roofed ’dobe 


170 Options 

house. She was polishing a silver cup with a cloth, and 
she looked like a pearl laid against black velvet. She 
turned on me a flatteringly protracted but a wiltingly 
disapproving gaze, and then went inside, humming a light 
song to indicate the value she placed upon my existence. 

Small wonder: for Dr. Stamfard (the most disreput- 
able professional man between Juneau and Valparaiso) 
and I were zigzagging along the turfy street, tunelessly 
singing the words of ‘‘Auld Lang Syne” to the air of 
‘^Muzzer’s Little Coal-Black Coon.” We had come from 
the ice factory, which was Mojada’s palace of wicked- 
ness, where we had been playing billiards and opening 
black bottles, white with frost, that we dragged with 
strings out of old Sandoval’s ice-cold vats. 

I turned in sudden rage to Dr. Stamford, as sober as 
the verger of a cathedral. In a moment I had become 
aware that we were swine cast before a pearl. 

ou beast,” I said, ‘Hhis is half your doing. And the 
other half is the fault of this cursed country. I’d better 
have gone back to Sleepytown and died in a wild orgy of 
currant wine and buns than to have had this happen.” 

Stamford filled the empty street with his roaring 
laughter. 

^Wou, too !” he cried. ^‘And all as quick as the pop- 
ping of a cork. Well, she does seem to strike agreeably 
upon the retina. But don’t burn your fingers. All 
Mojada will tell you that Louis Devoe is the man.” 

‘‘We will see about that,” said I. “And, perhaps, 
whether he is a man as well as tlie man.” 


The Head-Hunter 


171 


I lost no time in meeting Louis Devoe. That was easily 
accomplished, for the foreign colony in Mojada num- 
bered scarce a dozen ; and they gathered daily at a half- 
decent hotel kept by a Turk, where they managed to patch 
together the fluttering rags of country and civilization 
that were left them. I sought Devoe before I did my 
pearl of the doorway, because I had learned a little of the 
game of war, and knew better than to strike for a prize 
before testing the strength of the enemy. 

A sort of cold dismay — something akin to fear — 
filled me when I had estimated him. I found a man so 
perfectly 'poised, so charming, so deeply learned in the 
world’s rituals, so full of tact, courtesy, and hospitality, 
so endowed with grace and ease and a kind of careless, 
haughty power that I almost over-stepped the bounds in 
probing him, in turning him on the spit to find the weak 
point that I so craved for him to have. But I left him 
whole — I had to make bitter acknowledgment to myself 
that Louis Devoe was a gentleman w^orthy of my best 
blows ; and I swore to give him them. He was a great 
merchant of the country, a wealthy importer and ex- 
porter. All day he sat in a fastidiously appointed 
office, surrounded by works of art and evidences of his 
high culture, directing through glass doors and windows 
the affairs of his house. 

In person he was slender and hardly tall. His small, 
well-shaped head was covered with thick, brown hair, 
trimmed short, and he w^ore a thick, brown beard also cut 
close and to a fine point. His manners were a pattern. 


172 Options 

Before long I had become a regular and a welcome 
visitor at the Greene home. I shook my wild habits from 
me like a w’orn-out cloak. I trained for the conflict with 
the care of a prize-fighter and the self-denial of a Brah- 
min. 

As for Chloe Greene, I shall weary you with no sonnets 
to her eyebrow. She was a splendidly feminine girl, as 
wholesome as a November pippin, and no more mj^steri- 
ous than a window-pane. She had whimsical little theo- 
ries that she had deduced from life, and that fitted the 
maxims of Epictetus like princess gowns. I wonder, 
after all, if that old duffer wasn’t rather wise! 

Cliloe had a father, the Reverend Homer Greene, and 
an intermittent mother, who sometimes palely presided 
over a twilight teapot. The Reverend Homer was a 
burr-like man wuth a life-work. He was writing a con- 
cordance to the Scriptures, and had arrived as far as 
Kings. Being, presumably, a suitor for his daughter’s 
hand, I was timber for his literary outpourings. I had 
the family tree of Israel drilled into my head until I used 
to cry aloud in my sleep: “And Aminadab begat Jay 
Eye See,” and so forth, until he had tackled another 
book. I once made a calculation that the Reverend 
Homer’s concordance w^ould be w’orked up as far as the 
Seven Vials mentioned in Revelations about the third 
day after they were opened. 

Louis Devoe, as well as I, was a visitor and an intimate 
friend of the Greenes. It was there I met him the 


The Head-Hunter 173 

oftenest, and a more agreeable man or a more accom- 
plished I have never hated in my life. 

Luckily or unfortunately, I came to be accepted as a 
Boy. My appearance was youthful, and I suppose I 
had that pleading and homeless air that always draws 
the motherliness that is in women and the cursed theories 
and hobbies of paterfamilias. 

Chloe called me ‘‘Tommy,’’ and made sisterly fun of 
my attempts to woo her. With Devoe she was vastly 
more reserved. He was the man of romance, one to stir 
her imagination and deepest feelings had her fancy 
leaned toward him. I was closer to her, but standing in 
no glamour ; I had the task before me of winning her in 
what seems to me the American way of fighting — v/ith 
cleanness and pluck and every-day devotion to break 
away the barriers of friendship that divided us, and to 
take her, if I could, between sunrise and dark, abetted 
by neither moonlight nor music nor foreign wiles. 

Chloe gave no sign of bestowing her blithe affections 
upon either of us. But one day she let out to me an 
inkling of what she preferred in a man. It was tre- 
mendously interesting to me, but not illuminating as to 
its application. I had been tormenting her for the 
dozenth time with the statement and catalogue of my 
sentiments toward her. 

“Tommy,” said she, “I don’t want a man to show his 
love for me by leading an army against another country 
and blowing people off the earth with cannons.” 


174 Options 

you mean that the opposite way,” I answered, ‘‘as 
they say women do. I’ll see what I can do. The papers 
are full of this diplomatic row in Russia. My people 
know some big people in Washington who are right next 
to the army people, and I could get an artillery commis- 
sion and ” 

“I’m not that way,” interrupted Chloe. “I mean 
what I say. It isn’t the big things that are done in the 
world. Tommy, that count with a woman. When the 
knights were riding abroad in their armor to slay drag- 
ons, many a stay-at-home page won a lonesome lady’s 
hand by being on the spot to pick up her glove and be 
quick with her cloak when the wind blew. The man I am 
to like best, whoever he shall be, must show his love in 
little ways. He must never forget, after hearing it once, 
that I do not like to have any one walk at my left side ; 
that I detest bright-colored neckties; that I prefer to 
sit with my back to a light ; that I like candied violets ; 
that I must not be talked to when I am looking at the 
moonlight shining on water, and that I very, very often 
long for dates stuffed with English walnuts.” 

“Frivolity,” I said, with a frown. “Any well-trained 
servant would be equal to such details.” 

“And he must remember,” went on Chloe, “to remind 
me of what I want when I do not know, myself, what I 
want.” 

“You’re rising in the scale,” I said. “What you 
seem to need is a first-class clairvoyant.” 

“And if I say that I am dying to hear a Beethoven 


The Head-Hunter 


175 


sonata, and stamp my foot when I say it, he must know 
by that that what my soul craves is salted almonds; 
and he will have them ready in his pocket.” 

‘‘Now,” said I, “I am at a loss. I do not know 
whether your soul’s affinity is to be an impresario or a 
fancy grocer.” 

Chloe turned her pearly smile upon me. 

“Take less tlian half of what I said as a jest,” she 
went on. “And don’t think too lightly of the little 
things, Boy. Be a paladin if you must, but don’t let it 
show on you. Most women are only very big children, 
and most men are only very little ones. Please use ; don’t 
try to overpower us. When we want a hero we can make 
one out of even a plain grocer the third time he catches 
our handkerchief before it falls to the ground.” 

That evening I was taken down with pernicious fever. 
That is a kind of coast fever with improvements and 
high-geared attachments. Your temperature goes up 
among the threes and fours and remains there, laughing 
scornfully and feverishly at the cinchona trees and the 
coal-tar derivatives. Pernicious fever is a case for a 
simple mathematician instead of a doctor. It is merely 
this formula : Vitality -f- the desire to live — the dura- 
tion of the fever = the result. 

I took to my bed in the two-roomed thatched hut 
where I had been comfortably established, and sent for 
a gallon of rum. That was not for myself. Drunk, 
Stamford was the best doctor between the Andes and 


176 Options 

the Pacific. He came, sat at my beside, and drank 
himself into condition. 

^^My boy,” said he, “my lily-white and reformed 
Romeo, medicine will do you no good. But I will give 
you quinine, which, being bitter, will arouse in you hatred 
and anger — two stimulants that will add ten per cent, 
to your chances. You are as strong as a caribou calf, 
and you will get well if the fever doesn’t get in a knock- 
out blow when you’re off your guard.” 

For two weeks I lay on my back feeling like a Hindoo 
widow on a burning ghat. Old Atasca, an untrained 
Indian nurse, sat near the door like a petrified statue of 
What’s-the-Use, attending to her duties, which were, 
mainly, to see that time went by without slipping a cog. 
Sometimes I would fancy myself back in the Philippines, 
or, at worse times, sliding off the horsechair sofa in 
Sleepytown. 

One afternocm I ordered Atasca to vamose, and got up 
and dressed carefully. I took my temperature, which I 
was pleased to find 104. I paid almost dainty attention 
to my dress, choosing solicitously a necktie of a dull and 
subdued hue. The mirror showed that I was looking 
little the worse from my illness. The fever gave bright- 
ness to my eyes and color to my face. And while I 
looked at my reflection my color went and came again as 
I thought of Chloe Greene and the millions of eons that 
had passed since I’d seen her, and of Louis Devoe and 
the time he had gained on me. 

I went straight to her house. I seemed to float rather 


The Head-Hunter 


177 


than walk ; I hardly felt the ground under ray feet ; I 
thought pernicious fever must be a great boon to make 
one feel so strong. 

I found Chloe and Louis Devoe sitting under the awn- 
ing in front of the house. She jumped up and met me 
with a double handshake. 

^‘I’m glad, glad, glad to see 3^ou out again !” she cried, 
every word a pearl strung on the string of her sentence. 
‘‘You are well, Tommy — or better, of course. I wanted 
to come to see you, but they wouldn’t let me.” 

“Oh, yes,” said I, carelessly, “it was nothing. Merely 
a little fever. I am out again, as \^ou see.” 

We three sat there and talked for half an hour or so. 
Then Chloe looked out yearninglj^ and almost piteously 
across the ocean. I could see in her sea-blue eyes some 
deep and intense desire. Devoe, curse him ! saw it too. 

“What is it.^” we asked, in unison. 

“Cocoanut-pudding,” said Chloe, pathetically. “I’ve 
wanted some — oh, so badly, for two days. It’s got be- 
yond a wish ; it’s an obsession.” 

“The cocoanut season is over,” said Devoe, in that 
voice of his that gave thrilling interest to his most com- 
monplace words. “I hardly think one could be found in 
Mojada. The natives never use them except when they 
are green and the milk is fresh. They sell all the ripe 
ones to the fruiterers.” 

“Wouldn’t a broiled lobster or a Welsh rabbit do as 
well.^” I remarked, with the engaging idiocy of a perni- 
cious-fever convalescent. 


178 Options 

Chloe came as near pouting as a sweet disposition and 
a perfect profile would allow her to come. 

The Reverend Homer poked his ermine-lined face 
through the doorway and added a concordance to the 
conversation. 

^^Sometiines,” said he, ^‘old Campos keeps the dried 
nuts in his little store on the hill. But it vroiild be far 
better, my daughter, to restrain unusual desires, and 
partake thankfully of tlie daily dishes that the Lord 
has set before us.’’ 

^^Stuff!” said L 

^^How was that.?” asked the Reverend Homer, sharply. 

“I say it’s tough,” said I, ^‘to drop into the vernacular, 
that Miss Greene should be deprived of the food she 
desires — a simple thing like kalsomine-pudding. Per- 
haps,” I continued, solicitously, ^‘some pickled walnuts 
or a fricassee of Hungarian butternuts would do as 
well.” 

Every one looked at me with a slight exhibition of 
curiosity. 

Louis Devoe arose and made his adieus. I watched 
hini until he had sauntered slowly and grandiosely to the 
corner, around which he turned to reach his great ware- 
house and store. Chloe made her excuses, and went in- 
side for a few minutes to attend to some detail affecting 
the seven-o’clock dinner. She was a passed mistress in 
housekeeping. I had tasted her puddings and bread 
with beatitude. 

When all had gone, I turned casually and saw a basket 


The Head-Hunter 


179 


made of plaited green withes hanging by a nail outside 
the door-jamb. With a rush that made my hot temples 
throb there came vividly to my mind recollections of the 
head-hunters — those grhn, flint g, relentless little rneUy 
never seen but chilling the warmest noonday by the 
subtle terror of their concealed presence. . . . 

From time to time, as vanity or ennui or love or jealousy 
or ambition may move him, one creeps forth with his 
snickersnee and takes up the silent trail, . . . 
Back he comes, triumphant, bearing the severed, gory 
head of his victim. . . . His particidar brown or 

white maid lingers, with fluttering bosom, casting soft 
tigeFs eyes at the evidence of his love for her. 

I stole softly from the house and returned to my hut. 
From its supporting nails in the wall I took a machete 
as heavy as a butcher’s cleaver and sharper than a 
safety-razor. And then I chuckled softly to myself, and 
set out to the fastidiously appointed private office of 
Monsieur Louis Devoe, usurper to the hand of the Pearl 
of the Pacific. 

He was never slow at thinking ; he gave one look at my 
face and another at the weapon in my hand as I entered 
his door, and then he seemed to fade from my sight. I 
ran to the back door, kicked it open, and saw him running 
like a deer up the road toward the wood that began two 
hundred yards away. I was after him, with a shout. I 
remember hearing children and women screaming, and 
seeing them flying from the road. 

He was fleet, but I was stronger. A mile, and I had 


180 Options 

almost come up with him. He doubled cunningly and 
dashed into a brake that extended into a small canon. I 
crashed through this after him, and in five minutes had 
him cornered in an angle of insurmountable cliff’s. There 
his instinct of self-preservation steadied him, as it will 
steady even animals at bay. He turned to me, quite 
calm, with a ghastly smile. 

‘‘Oh, Rayburn he said, with such an awful effort at 
ease that I was impolite enough to laugh rudely in his 
face. “Oh, Rayburn !” said he, “come, let’s have done 
with this nonsense ! Of course, I know it’s the fever and 
you’re not yourself; but collect yourself, man — give 
me that ridiculous weapon, now, and let’s go back and 
talk it over.” 

“I will go back,” said I, “carrjdng your head with me. 
We will see how charmingly it can discourse when it lies 
in the basket at her door.” 

“Come,” said he, persuasively, “I think better of you 
than to suppose that you try this sort of thing as a joke. 
But even the vagaries of a fever-crazed lunatic come 
some time to a limit. What is this talk about heads and 
baskets? Get yourself together and throw away that 
absurd cane-chopper. What would Miss Greene think 
of you?” he ended, with the silky cajolery that one 
would use toward a fretful child. 

“Listen,” said I. “At last you have struck upon the 
ri^t note. What would she think of me? Listen,” I 
repeated. 


The Head-Hunter 


181 


^‘There are women,” I said, look upon horse- 

hair sofas and currant wine as dross. To them even the 
calculated modulation of vour well-trimmed talk sounds 
like the dropping of rotton plums from a tree in the night. 
They are the maidens who walk back and forth in the 
villages, scorning the emptiness of the baskets at the 
doors of the young men w^ho would win them. One, such 
as they,” I said, ^‘is w^aiting. Only a fool would try to 
win a w oman by drooling like a braggart in her doorway 
or by waiting upon her whims like a footman. They are 
all daughters of Herodias, and to gain their hearts one 
must lay the heads of his enemies before them with his 
own hands. Now, bend your neck, Louis Devoe. Do 
not be a coward as well as a chatterer at a lady’s tea- 
table.” 

‘‘There, there !” said Devoe, falteringly. “You know 
me, don’t you, Rayburn.?” 

“Oh, yes,” I said, “I know you. I know you. I know 
you. But the basket is empty. The old men of the vil- 
lage and the young men, and both the dark maidens and 
the ones who are as fair as pearls, walk back and forth 
and see its emptiness. Will you kneel now, or must we 
have a scuffle.? It is not like you to make things go 
roughly and with bad form. But the basket is waiting 
for your head.” 

With that he w^nt to pieces. I had to catch him as 
he tried to scamper past me like a scared rabbit. I 
stretched him out and got a foot on his chest, but he 


182 Options 

squirmed like a worm, although I appealed repeatedly 
to his sense of propriety and the duty he owed to him- 
self as a gentleman not to make a row. 

But at last he gave me the chance, and I swung the 
machete. 

It was not hard work. He flopped like a chicken dur- 
ing the six or seven blows that it took to sever his head ; 
but finally he lay still, and I tied his head in my handker- 
chief. The eyes opened and shut thrice while I w^alked 
a hundred yards. I was red to my feet with the drip, 
but what did that matter? With delight I felt under my 
hands the crisp touch of his short, thick, brown hair and 
close-trimmed beard. 

I reached the house of the Greenes and dumped the 
head of Louis Devoe into the basket that still hung by 
the nail in the door- jamb. I sat in a chair under the 
awning and waited. The sun was within two hours of 
setting. Chloe came out and looked surprised. 

^‘Where have you been. Tommy?” she asked. ‘‘You 
were gone wflien I came out.” 

“Look in the basket,” I said, rising to my feet. She 
looked, and gave a little scream — of delight, I was 
pleased to note. 

“Oh, Tommy !” she said. “It was just what I wanted 
you to do. It’s leaking a little, but that doesn’t matter. 
Wasn’t I telling you ? It’s the little things that count. 
And you remembered.” 

Little things ! She held the ensanguined head of Louis 
Devoe in her white apron. Tiny streams of red widened 


The Head-Hunter 183 

on her apron and dripped upon the floor. Her face was 
bright and tender. 

^‘Little things, indeed !” I thought again. ^‘The head- 
hunters are right. These are the things that women like 
you to do for them.” 

Chloe came close to me. There was no one in sight. 
She looked up at me with sea-blue eyes that said things 
they had never said before. 

^‘You think of me,” she said. ‘^You are the man I was 
describing. You think of the little things, and they are 
what make the world worth living in. The man for me 
must consider my little wishes, and make me happy in 
small ways. He must bring me little red peaches in 
December if I wish for them, and then I will love him till 
June. I will have no knight in armor slaying his rival or 
killing dragops for me. You please me very well, 
Tommy.” 

I stooped and kissed her. Then a moisture broke out 
on my forehead, and I began to feel weak. I saw the red 
stains vanish from Chloe’s apron, and the head of Louis 
Devoe turn to a brown, dried cocoanut. 

^‘There will be cocoanut-pudding for dinner, Tommy, 
boy,” said Chloe, gayly, ‘‘and you must come. I must 
go in for a little while.” 

She vanished in a delightful flutter. 

Dr. Stamford tramped up hurriedly. He seized my 
pulse as though it were his own property that I had es- 
caped with. 

“You are the biggest fool outside of any asylum !” he 


184 Options 

said, angrily. “Why did you leave your bed? And 
the idiotic things you’ve been doing ! — and no wonder, 
with your pulse going like a sledge-hammer.” 

“Name some of them,” said I, 

“Devoe sent for me,” said Stamford. “He saw you 
from his window go to old Campos’ store, chase him up 
the hill with his own yard-stick, and then come back 
and make off with his biggest cocoanut.” 

“It’s the little things that count, after all,” said I. 

“It’s your little bed that counts with you just now,” 
said the doctor. “You come with me at once, or I’ll 
throw up the case. You’re as loony as a loon.” 

So I got no cocoanut-pudding that evening, but I con- 
ceived a distrust as to the value of the method of the 
head-hunters. Perhaps for many centuries the maidens 
of the villages may have been looking wistfully at the 
heads in the baskets at the doorways, longing for other 
and lesser trophies. 


NO STORY 


To AVOID having this book hurled into a corner of the 
room by the suspicious reader, I will assert in time that 
this is not a newspaper story. You will encounter no 
shirt-sleeved, omniscient city editor, no prodigy ‘‘cub’’ 
reporter just off the farm, no scoop, no story — no any- 
thing. 

But if you will concede me the setting of the first scene 
in the reporters’ room of the Morning BeacoUy I will 
repay the favor by keeping strictly my promises set 
forth above. 

I was doing space-work on the Beacon^ hoping to be 
put on a salary. Some one had cleared with a rake or a 
shovel a small space for me at the end of a long table 
piled high with exchanges. Congressional Records^ and 
old files. There I did my work. I wrote whatever the 
city whispered or roared or chuckled to me on my diligent 
wanderings about its streets. My income was not regu- 
lar. 

One day Tripp came in and leaned on my table. Tripp 
was something in the mechanical department — I think 
he had sometliing to do with the pictures, for he smelled 
of photograpliers’ supplies, and his hands were always 
stained and cut up with acids. He was about twenty- 
five and looked forty. Half of his face was covered with 
short, curly red whiskers that looked like a doer-mat 
185 


186 Options 

with the ‘‘welcome” left off. He was pale and unhealthy 
and miserable and fawning, and an assiduous borrower 
of sums ranging from twenty-five cents to a dollar. 
One dollar was his limit. He knew the extent of his 
credit as well as the Chemical National Bank knows the 
amount of H2 O that collateral will show on analysis. 
When he sat on my table he held one hand with the other 
to keep both from shaking. Whiskey. He had a spu- 
rious air of lightness and bravado about him that de- 
ceived no one, but w^as useful in his borrowing because 
it was so pitifully and perceptibly assumed. 

This day I had coaxed from the cashier five shining 
silver dollars as a grumbling advance on a story that 
the Sunday editor had reluctantly accepted. So if I 
was not feeling at peace with the world, at least an 
armistice had been declared ; and I was beginning with 
ardor to write a description of the Brooklyn Bridge 
by moonlight. 

“Well, Tripp,” said I, looking up at him rather im- 
patiently, “how goes it.^” He was looking to-day more 
miserable, more cringing and haggard and downtrodden 
than I had ever seen him. He was at that stage of 
misery where he drew 3^our pity so fully that you longed 
to kick him. 

“Have you got a dollar.?” asked Tripp, with his most 
fawning look and his dog-like eyes that blinked in the 
narrow space between his high-growing matted beard 
and his low-growing matted hair. 

“I have/’ said I; and again I said, “I have,” more 


187 


No Story 

loudly and inhospitably, ^^and four besides. And I had 
hard work corkscrewing them out of old Atkinson, I can 
tell you. And I drew them,” I continued, ‘Ho meet a 
want — a hiatus — a demand — a need — an exigency 

— a requirement of exactly five dollars.” 

I was driven to emphasis by the premonition that I 
w as to lose one of the dollars on the spot. 

“I don’t want to borrow any,” said Tripp, and I 
breathed again. “I thought you’d like to get put onto a 
good story,” he went on. “I’ve got a rattling fine one 
for you. You ought to make it run a column at least. 
It ’ll make a dandy if you work it up right. It ’ll prob- 
ably cost you a dollar or tw-o to get the stuff*. 1 don’t 
want anything out of it myself.” 

I became placated. The proposition showed that 
Tripp appreciated past favors, although he did not re- 
turn them. If he had been wise enough to strike me for 
a quarter then he would have got it. 

“What is the story I asked, poising my pencil with 
a finely calculated editorial air. 

“I’ll tell you,” said Tripp. “It’s a girl. A beauty. 
One of the howlingest Amsden’s Junes you ever saw. 
Rosebuds covered with dew^ — violets in their mossy bed 

— and truck like that. She’s lived on Long Island 
twenty years and never saw New York City before. I 
ran against her on Thirty-fourth Street. She’d just 
got in on the East River ferry. I tell you, she’s a beauty 
that would take the hydrogen out of all the peroxides 
in the world. She stopped me on the street and asked 


188 Options 

me whei’e she could find George Brown. Asked me where 
she could find George Brown in New York City! What 
do you think of that? 

talked to her, and found that she was going to 
marry a young farmer named Dodd — Hiram Dodd — 
next week. But it seems that George Brown still holds 
the championship in her youthful fancy. George had 
greased his cowhide boots some years ago, and came to 
the city to make his fortune. But he forgot to remem- 
ber to show up again at Greenburg, and Hiram got in 
as second-best choice. But when it comes to the scratch 
Ada — her name^s Ada Lowery — saddles a nag and 
rides eight miles to the railroad station and catcnes 
the 6:45 a. m. train for the city. Looking for George^ 
you know — you understand about women — George 
wasn’t there, so she wanted him. 

‘‘Well, you know, I couldn’t leave her loose in Wolf- 
town-on-thc-Hudson. I suppose she thought the first 
person she inquired of would say: ‘George Brown? — 
why, yes — lemme see — he’s a short man with light-blue 
eyes, ain’t he? Oh, yes — you’ll find George on One 
Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street, right next to the 
grocery. He’s bill-clerk in a saddle-and-harness store.’ 
That’s about how innocent and beautiful she is. You 
know those little Long Island water-front villages like 
Greenburg — a couple of duck-farms for sport, and 
clams and about nine summer visitors for industries. 
That’s the kind of a place she comes from. But, say — 
you ought to see her ! 


189 


No Story 

‘‘What could I do? I don’t know what money looks 
like in the morning. And she’d paid her last cent of 
pocket-money for her railroad ticket except a quarter, 
which she had squandered on gum-drops. She was eat- 
ing them out of a paper bag. I took her to a boarding- 
house on Thirty-second Street where I used to live, and 
hocked her. She’s in soak for a dollar. That’s old 
Mother McGinnis’ price per day. I’ll show you the 
house. 

“What words are these, Tripp?” said I. “I thought 
you said you had a story. Every ferryboat that crosses 
the East River brings or takes away girls from Long 
Island.” 

The premature lines on Tripp’s face grew deeper. 
He frowned seriously from his tangle of hair. He sepa- 
rated his hands and emphasized his answer with one 
shaking forefinger. 

“Can’t you see,” he said, “what a rattling fine story it 
would make? You could do it fine. All about the ro- 
mance, you know, and describe the girl, and put a lot of 
stuff in it about true love, and sling in a few stickfuls 
of funny business — joshing the Long Islanders about 
being green, and, w^ell — you know how to do it. You 
ought to get fifteen dollars out of it, anyhow. And it’ll 
cost you only about four dollars. You’ll make a clear 
profit of eleven.” 

“How will it cost me four dollars?” I asked, suspi- 
ciously. 

“One dollar to Mrs. McGinnis,” Tripp answered# 


190 Options 

promptly, ‘‘and two dollars to pay the girl’s fare back 
homo.” 

“And the fourth dimension.^” I inquired, making a 
rapid mental calculation. 

“One dollar to me,” said Tripp, “for whiskey. Are 
you on.^” 

I smiled enigmatically and spread my elbows as if to 
begin writing again. B ut this grim, abj ect, specious, sub- 
servient, burr-like wreck of a man would not be shaken 
off. His forehead suddenly became shiningly moist. 

“Don’t you see,” he said, with a sort of desperate calm- 
ness, “that this girl has got to be sent home to-day — 
not to-night nor to-morrow, but to-day? I can’t do 
anything for her. You know, I’m the janitor and corre- 
sponding secretary of the Down-and-Out Club. I 
thought you could make a newspaper story out of it and 
win out a piece of money on general results. But, any- 
how, don’t you see that she’s got to get back home before 
night?” 

And then I began to feel that dull, leaden, soul-de- 
pressing sensation known as the sense of duty. Why 
should that sense fall upon one as a weight and a burden? 
I knew that I was doomed that day to give up the bulk of 
my store of hard-wrung coin to the relief of this Ada 
Lowery. But I swore to myself that Tripp’s whiskey 
dollar would not be forthcoming. He might play knight- 
errant at my expense, but he would indulge in no wassail 
afterward, commemorating my weakness and gullibility. 
In a kind of chilly anger I put on my coat and hat. 


191 


No Story 

Tripp, submissive, cringing, vainly endeavoring to 
please, conducted me via the street-cars to the human 
pawn-shop of Mother McGinnis. I paid the fares. It 
seemed that the collodion-scented Don Quixote and the 
smallest minted coin were strangers. 

Tripp pulled the bell at the door of the mouldy red- 
brick boarding-house. At its faint tinkle he paled, and 
crouched as a rabbit makes ready to spring away at the 
sound of a hunting-dog. I guessed what a life he had 
led, terror-haunted by the coming footsteps of land- 
ladies. 

‘"Give me one of the dollars — quick!” he said. 

The door opened six inches. Mother McGinnis stood 
there with white eyes — they were white, I say — and a 
yellow face, holding together at her throat with one 
hand a dingy pink flannel dressing-sack. Tripp thrust 
the dollar through the space without a word, and it 
bought us entry. 

‘^She’s in the parlor,” said the McGinnis, turning the 
back of her sack upon us. 

In the dim parlor a girl sat at the cracked marble 
centre-table weeping comfortably and eating gum-drops. 
She was a flawless beauty. Crying had only made her 
brilliant eyes brighter. When she crunched a gum-drop 
you thought onl y of the poetry of motion and envied the 
senseless confection. Eve at the age of five minutes 
must have been a ringer for Miss Ada Lowery at nine- 
teen or twenty. I was introduced, and a gum-drop 
^suffered neglect while she conveyed to me a naive interest. 


192 Options 

such as a puppy dog (a prize winner) might bestow 
upon a crawling beetle or a frog. 

Tripp took his stand by the table, with the fingers of 
one hand spread upon it, as an attorney or a master of 
ceremonies might have stood. But he looked the master 
of nothing. His faded coat was buttoned high, as if it 
sought to be charitable to deficiencies of tie and linen. I 
thought of a Scotch terrier at the sight of his shifty eyes 
in the glade between his tangled hair and beard. For 
one ignoble moment I felt ashamed of having been intro- 
duced as his friend in the presence of so much beauty in 
distress. But evidently Tripp meant to conduct the 
ceremonies, whatever they might be. I thought I de- 
tected in his actions and pose an intention of foisting the 
situation upon me as material for a new^spaper story, in 
a lingering hope of extracting from me his whiskey 
dollar. 

^‘My friend” (I shuddered), ‘‘Mr. Chalmers,” said 
Tripp, “wull tell you. Miss Lowery, the same that I did. 
He’s a reporter, and he can hand out the talk better 
than I can. That’s why I brought him wuth me.” (O 
Tripp, wasn’t it the ^iZr^^r-tongued orator you wanted?) 
“He’s wise to a lot of things, and he’ll tell you now what’s 
best to do.” 

I stood on one foot, as it were, as I sat in rickety 
chair. 

“Why — er — Miss Lowery,” I began, secretly en- 
raged at Tripp’s awkward opening, “I am at your 
service, of course, but — er — as I haven’t been apprized 
of the circumstances of the case, I — er- ” 


193 


No Story 

said Miss Lowery, beaming for a moment, 
ain’t as bad as that — there ain’t any circumstances. 
It’s the first time I’ve ever been in New York except once 
when I was five years old, and I had no idea it was such a 
big town. And I met Mr. — Mr. Snip on the street and 
asked him about a friend of mine, and he brought me 
here and asked me to wait.” 

advise you. Miss Lowery,” said Tripp, ^‘to tell 
Mr. Chalmers all. He’s a friend of mine” (I was get- 
ting used to it by this time), ^^and he’ll give you the 
right tip.” 

‘‘Why, certainly,” said Miss Ada, chewing a gum-drop 
toward me. “There ain’t anything to tell except that 
— well, everything’s fixed for me to marry Hiram Dodd 
next Thursday evening. Hi has got two hundred acres 
of land with a lot of shore-front, and one of the best 
truck-farms on the Island. But this morning I had my 
horse saddled up — he’s a white horse named Dancer — - 
and I rode over to the station. I told ’em at home I was 
going to spend the day with Susie Adams. It w^as a 
story, I guess, but I don’t care. And I came to New 
York on the train, and I met Mr. — Mr. Flip on the street; 
and asked him if he knew where I could find G — G ” 

“Now, Miss Lowery,” broke in Tripp, loudly, and with 
much bad taste, I thought, as she hesitated with her 
word, “you like this young man, Hiram Dodd, don’t 
you.^ He’s all right, and good to you, ain’t he?” 

“Of course I like him,” said Miss Lowery, emphat- 
ically. “Hi’s all right. And of course he’s good to 
me. So is everybody.” 


194 Options 

I could have sworn it myself. Throughout Miss Ada 
Lowery’s life all men would be good to her. They would 
strive, contrive, struggle, and compete to hold umbrellas 
over her hat, check her trunk, pick up her handkerchief, 
and buy for her soda at the fountain. 

^‘But,” went on Miss Lowery, ^‘last night I got to 
thinking about G — George and I ” 

Down went the bright gold head upon her dimpled, 
clasped hands on the table. Such a beautiful April 
storm! Unrestrainedly she sobbed. I wished I could 
have comforted her. But I was not George. And I 
was glad I was not Hiram — and yet I was sorrj^ too. 

By-and-by the shower passed. She straightened up, 
brave and halfway smiling. She would have made a 
splendid wife, for crying only made her eyes more bright 
and tender. She took a gum-drop and began her story. 

guess I’m a terrible hayseed,” she said, between her 
little gulps and sighs, ‘‘but I can’t help it. G — George 
Brown and I were sweethearts since he was eight and I 
was five. When he was nineteen — that was four years 
ago — he left Greenburg and went to the city. He said 
he was going to be a policeman or a railroad president 
or something. And then he was coming back for me. 
But I never heard from him any more. And I — I — 
liked him.” 

Another flow of tears seemed imminent, but Tripp 
hurled himself into the crevasse and dammed it. Con- 
found him, I could see his game. He was trying to 
make a story of it for his sordid ends and profit. 

“Go on, Mr. Chalmers,” said he, “and tell the lady 


No Story 193 

i^'hat’s the proper caper. That’s what I told her — 
you’d hand it to her straight. Spiel up.” 

I coughed, and tried to feel less wrathful toward 
Tripp. I saw iny dut3^ Cunningly I had been in- 
veigled, but I was securely trapped. Tripp’s first dic- 
tum to me had been just and correct. The young lady 
must be sent back to Greenburg that day. She must 
be argued with, convinced, assured, instructed, ticketed, 
and returned without delay. I hated Hiram and de- 
spised George ; but duty must be done. Noblesse oblige 
and only five silver dollars are not strictly romantic 
compatibles, but sometimes they can be made to jibe. It 
w^as mine to be Sir Oracle, and then pay the freight. So 
I assumed an air that mingled Solomon’s with that of the 
general passenger agent of the Long Island Railroad. 

‘^Miss Lowery,” said I, as impressively as I could, 
^"^life is rather a queer proposition, after all.” There 
was a familiar sound to these words after I had spokeu 
them, and I hoped Miss Lowery had never heard 
Cohan’s song. ‘‘Those whom we first love w^e seldom wed. 
Our earlier romances, tinged wdth the magic radiance of 
youth, often fail to materialize.” The last three words 
sounded somewhat trite when they struck the air. “But 
those fondly cherished dreams,” I went on, “may cast a 
pleasant afterglow on our future lives, how^ever imprac- 
ticable and vague they may have been. But life is full 
of realities as well as visions and dreams. One cannot 
live on memories. May I ask, jMiss Lowery, if you 
think you could pass a happy — that is, a contented and 
harmonious life with Mr. — er — Dodd — if in other 


196 Options 

wajs than romantic recollections he seems to — er — 
fill the bill, as I might say?” 

‘‘Oh, Hi’s all right,” answered Miss Lowery. “Yes, I 
could get along with him fine. He’s promised me an 
automobile and a motor-boat. But somehow, when it 
got so close to the time I was to marry him, I couldn’t 
help wishing — well, j ust thinking about George. Some- 
thing must have happened to him or he’d have written. 
On the day he left, he and me got a hammer and a chisel 
and cut a dime into two pieces. I took one piece and he 
took the other, and we promised to be true to each other 
and always keep the pieces till we saw each other again. 
I’ve got mine at home now in a ring-box in the top drawer 
of my dresser. I guess I was silly to come up here look- 
ing for him. I never realized what a big place it is.” 

And then Tripp joined in with a little grating laugh 
that he had, still trying to drag in a little story or drama 
to earn the miserable dollar that he craved. 

“Oh, the boys from the country forget a lot when they 
come to the city and learn something. I guess George, 
maybe, is on the bum, or got roped in by some other girl, 
or maybe gone to the dogs on account of whiskey or the 
races. You listen to Mr. Chalmers and go back home, 
and you’ll be all right.” 

But now the time was come for action, for the hands 
of the clock were moving close to noon. Frowning upon 
Tripp, I argued gently and philosophically with Miss 
Lowery, delicately convincing her of the importance of 
returning home at once. And I impressed upon her the 
truth that it would not be absolutely necessary to her 


197 


No Story 

future happiness that she mention to Hi the wonders or 
the fact of her visit to the city that had swallowed up 
the unlucky George. 

She said she had left her horse (unfortunate Rosin- 
ante) tied to a tree near the railroad station. Tripp 
and I gave her instructions to mount the patient steed 
as soon as she arrived and ride home as fast as possible. 
There she was to recount the exciting adventure of a day 
spent with Susie Adams. She could Susie — I 

was sure of that — and all would be well. 

And then, being susceptible to the barbed arrows of 
beauty, I warmed to the adventure. The three of us 
hurried to the ferry, and there I found the price of a 
ticket to Greenburg to be but a dollar and eighty cents. 
I bought one, and a red, red rose with the twenty cents 
for Miss Lowery. We saw her aboard her ferryboat, 
and stood watching her wave her handkerchief at us 
until it was the tiniest white patch imaginable. And 
then Tripp and I faced each other, brought back to 
earth, left dry and desolate in the shade of the sombre 
verities of life. 

The spell wrought by beauty and romance was dwin- 
dling. I looked at Tripp and almost sneered. He 
looked more careworn, contemptible, and disreputable 
than ever. I fingered the two silver dollars remaining in 
m}^ pocket and looked at him with the half-closed eyelids 
of contempt. He mustered up an imitation of resistance. 

“Can’t you get a story out of it?” he asked, huskily. 
‘^Some sort of a story, even if you have to fake part of 
it?” 


198 Options 

^‘Not a line,” said I. ^‘1 can fancy the look on Grimes’ 
face if I should try to put over any slush like this. But 
we’ve helped the little lady out, and that’ll have to be 
our only reward.” 

‘‘I’m sorry,” said Tripp, almost inaudibly. “I’m 
sorry you’re out your money. Now, it seemed to me 
like a find of a big story, you know — that is, a sort of 
thing that would write up pretty well.” 

“Let’s try to forget it,” said I, with a praiseworthy 
attempt at gayety, “and take the next car ’cross town.” 

I steeled myself against his unexpressed but palpable 
desire. He should not coax, cajole, or wring from me 
the dollar he craved. I had had enough of that wild- 
goose chase. 

Tripp feebly unbuttoned his coat of the faded pattern 
and glossy scams to reach for something that had once 
been a handkerchief deep down in some obscure and 
cavernous pocket. As he did so I caught the shine of a 
cheap silver-plated watch-chain across his vest, and 
something dangling from it caused me to stretch forth 
my hand and seize it curiously. It was the half of a 
silver dime that had been cut in halves with a chisel. 

“What” I said, looking at him keenly. 

“Oh, yes,” he responded, dully. “George Brown, 
alias Tripp. What’s the use?” 

Barring the W. C. T. LT., I’d like to know if anybody 
disapproves of my having produced promptly from my 
pocket Tripp’s whiskey dollar and unhesitatingly laying 
it in his hand. 


THE HIGHER PRAGMATISM 


I 

Where to go for wisdom has become a question of 
serious import. The ancients are discredited ; Plato is 
boiler-plate; Aristotle is tottering; Marcus Aurelius is 
reeling; ^sop has been copyrighted by Indiana; Solo- 
mon is too solemn; you couldn’t get anything out of 
Epictetus with a pick. 

The ant, which for many years served as a model of 
intelligence and industry in the school-readers, has been 
proven to be a doddering idiot and a waster of time and 
effort. The owl to-day is hooted at. Chautauqua con- 
ventions have abandoned culture and adopted diabolo. 
Graybeards give glowing testimonials to the venders of 
patent hair-restorers. There are typographical errors* 
in the almanacs published by the daily newspapers. 
College professors have become 

But there shall be no personalities. 

To sit in classes, to delve into the encyclopedia or the 
past-performances page, will not make us wise. As the 
poet says, ‘‘Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers.” 
Wisdom is dew, which, while we know it not, soaks into 
us, refreshes us, and makes us grow. Knowledge is a * 
strong stream of water turned on us through a hose. It 
disturbs our roots. 

m 


200 Options 

Then, let us rather gather wisdom. But how to do so 
requires knowledge. If we know a thing, we know it; 
but very often we are not wise to it that we are wise, 
and 

But let’s go on with the story. 

II 

Once upon a time I found a ten-cent magazine lying 
on a bench in a little city park. Anyhow, that was the 
amount he asked me for when I sat on the bench next to 
him. He was a musty, dingy, and tattered magazine, 
with some queer stories bound in him, I was sure. He 
turned out to be a scrap-book. 

‘‘I am a newspaper reporter,” I said to him, to try 
him. have been detailed to write up some of the 
experiences of the unfortunate ones who spend their 
evenings in this park. May I ask you to what you 
attribute your downfall in ” 

I was interrupted by a laugh from my purchase — a 
laugh so rusty and unpractised that I was sure it had 
been his first for many a day. 

‘^Oh, no, no,” said he. ‘‘You ain’t a reporter. Re- 
porters don’t talk that way. They pretend to be one 
of us, and say they’ve just got on the blind baggage 
from St. Louis. I can tell a reporter on sight. Us 
park bums get to be fine judges of human nature. We 
sit here all day and watch the people go by. I can size 
up anybody who walks past my bench in a way that 
would surprise you.” 


The Higher Pragmatism 201 

‘‘Well,” I said, “go on and tell me. How do you size 
me up?” 

“I should say,” said the student of human nature with 
unpardonable hesitation, “that you was, say, in the con- 
tracting business — or maybe worked in a store — or 
was a sign-painter. You stopped in the park to finish 
your cigar, and thought you’d get a little free monologue 
out of me. Still, you might be a plasterer or a lawyer 
— it’s getting kind of dark, you see. And your wife 
won’t let you smoke at home.” 

I frowned gloomily. 

“But, judging again,” went on the reader of men, 
“I’d say you ain’t got a wife.” 

“No,” said I, rising restlessly. “No, no, no, I ain’t. 
But I will have, by the arrows of Cupid. That is 
if ” 

My voice must have trailed away and mufiled itself 
in uncertainty and despair. 

“I see you have a story yourself,” said the dusty 
vagrant — imprudently, it seemed to me. “Suppose you 
take your dime back and spin your yarn for me. I’m 
interested myself in the ups and downs of unfortunate 
ones who spend their evenings in the park.” 

Somehow, that amused me. I looked at the frowsy 
derelict with more interest. I did have a story. Why 
not tell it to him ? I had told none of my friends. I had 
always been a reserved and bottled-up man. It was 
psychical timidity or sensitiveness — perhaps both. 


202 Options 

And I smiled to myself in wonder when I felt an impulse 
to confide in this stranger and vagabond. 

‘‘Jack,” said I. 

“Mack,” said he. 

“Mack,” said I, “I’ll tell you.” 

“Do you want the dime back in advance?” said he. 

I handed him a dollar. 

“The dime,” said I, “was the price of listening to 
your story.” 

‘"Right on the point of the jaw,” said he. “Go on.” 

And then, incredible as it may seem to the lovers in 
the world who confide their sorrows only to the night 
wind and the gibbous moon, I laid bare my secret to that 
wreck of all things that you would have supposed to be 
in sympathy wdth love. 

I told him of the days and weeks and months that I 
had spent in adoring Mildred Telfair. I spoke of my 
despair, my grievous days and wakeful nights, my 
dwindling hopes and distress of mind. I even pictured 
to this night-prowler her beauty and dignity, the great 
sway she had in society, and the magnificence of her life 
as the elder daughter of an ancient race whose pride 
overbalanced the dollars of the city’s millionaires. 

“Why don’t you cop the lady out?” asked Mack, 
bringing me down to earth and dialect again. 

I explained to him that my worth was so small, my 
income so minute, and my fears so large that I hadn’t 
the courage to speak to her of my worship. I told him 
that in her presence I could only blush and stammer, and 


The Higher Pragrriatism 203 

that she looked upon me with a wonderful, maddening 
smile of amusement. 

“She kind of moves in the professional class, don’t 
she?” asked Mack. 

“The Telfair family ” I began, haughtil3\ 

“I mean professional beg-uty,” said my hearer. 

^^She is greatly and widely admired,” I answered. 
cautiousl3\ 

“Any sisters?” 

“One.” 

“You know an}’^ more girls?” 

‘‘Why, several,” I answered. “And a few others.” 

“Say,” said Mack, “tell me one thing — can you hand 
out the dope to other girls ? Can you chin ’em and make 
matinee eyes at ’em and squeeze ’em? You know what 
I mean. You’re just shy when it comes to this particu- 
lar dame — the professional beauty — ain’t that right?” 

“In a way you have outlined the situation with ap- 
proximate truth,” I admitted. 

“I thought so,” said Mack, grimly. “Now, that re- 
minds me of my own case. I’ll tell you about it,” 

I was indignant, but concealed it. What was this 
loafer’s case or anybody’s case compared with mine? 
Besides, I had given him a dollar and ten cents. 

“Feel my muscle,” said my companion, suddenly" 
flexjng his biceps. I did so mechanically. The fellows 
in gyims arc always asking you to do tliat. His arm was 
as hard as cast-iron, 

“P'our years ago,” said Mack, could lick any man 


204 Options 

in New York outside of the professional ring. Your 
case and mine is just the same. I come from the West 
Side — between Thirtieth and Fourteenth — and I won’t 
give the number on the door. I was a scrapper when I 
was ten, and when I was twenty no amateur in the city 
could stand up four rounds with me. ’S a fact. You 
know Bill McCarty.^ No.'^ He managed the smokers 
for some of them swell clubs. Well, I knocked out every- 
thing Bill brought up before me. I was a middle-weight, 
but could train down to a welter when necessary. I 
boxed all over the West Side at bouts and benefits and 
private entertainments, and was never put out once. 

^‘But, say, the first time I put my foot in the ring with 
a professional I was no more than a canned lobster. I 
dunno how it was — I seemed to lose heart. I guess I 
got too much imagination. There was a formality and 
publicness about it that kind of weakened my nerve. I 
never won a fight in the ring. Light-weights and all 
kinds of scrubs used to sign up with my manager and 
then walk up and tap me on the wrist and see me fall. 
The minute I seen the crowd and a lot of gents in evening 
clothes down in front, and seen a professional come inside 
the ropes, I got as weak as ginger-ale. 

‘^Of course, it wasn’t long till I couldn’t get no 
backers, and I didn’t have any more chances to fight a 
professional — or many amateurs, either. But lemme 
tell you — I was as good as most men inside the ring or 
out. It was just that dumb, dead feeling I had when 
I was up against a regular that always done me up. 


The Higher Pragmatism 205 

^‘Well, sir, after I had got out of the business, I got a 
mighty grouch on. I used to go round town licking 
private citizens and all kinds of unprofessionals just to 
please myself. I’d lick cops in dark streets and car- 
conductors and cab-drivers and draymen whenever I 
could start a row with ’em. It didn’t make any differ- 
ence how big they were, or how much science they had, 
I got away with ’em. If I’d only just have had the 
confidence in the ring that I had beating up the best 
men outside of it, I’d be w^earing black pearls and helio- 
trope silk socks to-day. 

‘‘One evening I w^as walking along near the Bowery, 
thinking about things, when along comes a slumming- 
party. About six or seven they was, all in swallowtails, 
and these silk hats that don’t shine. One of the gang 
kind of shoves me off the sidewalk. I hadn’t had a scrap 
in three days, and I just says, ‘De-light-ed’ and hits 
him back of the ear. 

“Well, w'e had it. That Johnnie put up as decent a 
little fight as you’d want to see in the moving pictures. 
It was on a side street, and no cops around. The other 
guy had a lot of science, but it only took me about six 
minutes to lay him out. 

“Some of the sw^allowtails dragged him up against 
some steps and began to fan him. Another one of ’em 
Gomes over to me and says: 

“Woung man, do you know what you’ve done?’ 

“ ‘Oh, beat it,’ says I. ‘I’ve done nothing but a little 


) 


206 Options 

punching-bag work. Take Freddy back to Yale and 
tell him to quit studying sociology on the wrong side 
of the sidewalk.’ 

‘My good fellow',’ says he, ‘I don’t know who you are, 
but I’d like to. You’ve knocked out Reddy Burns, the 
champion middle-weight of the world ! He came to New 
York yesterday, to try to get a match on with Jim 
Jeffries. If you ’ 

‘‘But when I come out of my faint I was laying on the 
floor in a drug-store saturated with aromatic spirits of 
ammonia. If I’d known that was Reddy Burns, I’d 
have got down in the gutter and crawled past him instead 
of handing him one like I did. Why, if I’d ever been in 
a ring and seen him climbing over the ropes, I’d have been 
all to the sal-volatile. 

“So that’s what imagination does,” concluded Mack. 
“iVnd as I said, your case and mine is simultaneous. 
You’ll never win out. You can’t go up against the 
professionals. I tell you, it’s a park bench for yours 
in this romance business.” 

Mack, the pessimist, laughed harshly. 

“I’m afraid I don’t see the parallel,” I said, coldly. 
“I have only a very slight acquaintance with the prize 
ring.” 

The derelict touched my sleeve with his forefinger, for 
emphasis, as he explained his parable. 

“Every man,” said he, with some dignity, “has got 
his lamps on something that looks good to him. With 
you, it’s this dame that you’re afraid to say your say to. 


The Higher Pragmatism 207 

With me, it was to win out in the ring. Well, you’ll 
lose just like I did.” 

^‘Why do you think I shall lose?” I asked warmly. 

’Cause,” said he, ‘‘you’re afraid to go in the ring. 
You dassen’t stand up before a professional. Your case 
and mine is just the same. You’re a amateur; and that 
means that you’d better keep outside of the ropes.” 

“Weil, I must be going,” I said, rising and looking 
with elaborate care at my watch. 

When I was twenty feet away the park-bencher called 
to me. 

“Much obliged for the dollar,” he said. “And for 
the dime. But you’ll never get ’er. You’re in the 
amateur class.” 

“Serves you right,” I said to myself, “for hobnobbing 
with a tramp. His impudence!” 

But, as I walked, his words seemed to repeat them- 
selves over and over again in my brain. I think I even 
grew angry at the man. 

“I’ll show him !” I finally said, aloud. “I’ll show him 
that I can fight Reddy Burns, too — even knowing who 
he is.” 

I hurried to a telephone-booth and rang up the Telfair 
residence. 

Afsoft, sweet voice answered. Didn’t I know that 
voiced? My hand holding the receiver shook. 

“Is that you?"^ said I, employing the foolish words that 
form the vocabulary of every talker through the tele- 
phone. 


208 Options 

‘‘Yes, this is I,” came back the answer in the low, 
clear-cut tones that are an inheritance of the Telfairs. 
“Who is it, please?” 

“It’s me,” said I, less ungrammatically than egotisti- 
cally. “It’s me, and I’ve got a few things that I want 
to say to you right now and immediately and straight 
to the point.” 

*‘Dear me,” said the voice. “Oh, it’s you, Mr. Arden !” 

I wondered if any accent on the first word was in- 
tended. Mildred was fine at saying things that you had 
to study out afterward. 

“Yes,” said I, “I hope so. And now to come down to 
brass tacks.” I thought that rather a vernacularism, if 
there is such a word, as soon as I had said it ; but I didn’t 
stop to apologize. “You know^, of course, that I love 
you, and that I have been in that idiotic state for a long 
time. I don’t want any more foolishness about it — that 
is, I mean I want an answer from you right now. Will 
you marry me or not? Hold the wire, please. Keep 
out. Central. Hello, hello ! Will you, or will you notV^ 

That was just the uppercut for Reddy Burns’ chin. 
The answer came back : 

“Why, Phil, dear, of course I will! I didn’t know 
that you — that is, you never said — oh, come up to the 
house, please — I can’t say what I want to over the 
’phone. You are so importunate. But please come up 
to the house, won’t you?” 

Would I? 

I rang the bell of the Telfair house violently. Some 


The Higher Pragmatism 209 

sort of a human came to the door and shooed me into 
the drawing-room. 

‘‘Oh, well,” said I to myself, looking at the ceiling, 
“any one can learn from any one. That was a pretty 
good philosophy of Mack’s, anyhow. He didn’t take 
advantage of his experience, but I get the benefit of it. 
If you want to get into the professional class, you’ve 
got to ” 

I stopped thinking then. Some one was coming 
down the stairs. My knees began to shake. I knew then 
how Mack had felt when a professional began to climb 
over the ropes. I looked around foolishly for a door 
or a window by which I might escape. If it had been 
any other girl approaching, I mightn’t have 

But just then the door opened, and Bess, Mildred’s 
younger sister, came in. I’d never seen her look so much 
like a glorified angel. She walked straight up to me, 
and — and 

I’d never noticed before what perfectly wonderful eyes 
and hair Elizabeth Telfair had. 

“Phil,” she said, in the Telfair, sweet, thrilling tones, 
“why didn’t you tell me about it, before? I thought it 
was lister you wanted all the time, until you telephoned 
to me a few minutes ago !” 

I suppose Mack and I always will be hopeless amateurs. 
But, as the thing has turned out in my case, I’m mighty 
glad of it. 


BEST-SELLER 


I 

One day last summer I went to Pittsburgh — well, I 
had to go there on business. 

My chair-car was profitably well filled with people of 
the kind one usually sees on chair-cars. Most of them 
were ladles in brown-silk dresses cut with square yokes, 
with lace insertion, and dotted veils, who refused to have 
the windows raised. Then there was the usual number 
of men who looked as if they might be in almost any 
business and going almost anywhere. Some students of 
human nature can look at a man in a Pullman and tell 
you where he is from, his occupation and his stations in 
life, both flag and social ; but I never could. The only 
way I can correctly judge a fellow-traveller is when the 
train is held up by robbers, or when he reaches at the 
same time I do for the last towel in the dressing-room of 
the sleeper. 

The porter came and brushed the collection of soot on 
the window-sill olF to the left knee of my trousers. I 
removed it with an air of apology. The temperature 
was eighty-eight. One of the dotted-vefled ladies de- 
manded the closing of two more ventilators, and spoke 
loudly of Interlaken. I leaned back icHy in charr No. 7, 
2X0 


Best-Seller 


211 


and looked with the tepidest curiosity at the small, 
black, bald-spotted head just visible above the back of 
No. 9. 

Suddenly No. 9 hurled a book to the floor between his 
chair and the window, and, looking, I saw that it was 
*‘The Rose Lady and Trevelyan” one of the best-selling 
novels of the present day. And then the critic or Philis- 
tine, whichever he was, veered his chair toward the win- 
dow,. and I knew him at once for John A. Pesoid, of 
Pittsburgh, travelling salesman for a plate-glass com- 
pany — an old acquaintance whom I had not seen in two 
years. 

In two minutes we were faced, had shaken hands, and 
had finished with such topics as rain, prosperity, health, 
residence, and destination. Politics might have followed 
next ; but I was not so ill-fated. 

I wish you might know John A. Pescud. He Is of the 
stuff that heroes are not often lucky enough to be made 
of. He is a small man with a wide smile, and an eye that 
seems to be fixed upon that little red spot on the end of 
your nose. I never saw him w^ear but one kind of neck- 
tie, and he believes in cu3*-holders and button-shoes. He 
is aB^hard and true as anything ever turned out the 
Cambria Steel Works; and he believes that as soon as 
Pittsburgh makes smoke-consumers compulsory, St. 
Peter will come down and sit at the foot of Smithficld 
Street, and let somebody else attend to the gate up in the 
branch heaven. He believes that ^^our” plate-glass is 
the most iionortant commodity in the world, and that 


212 Options 

when a man is in his home town he ought to be decent 
and law-abiding. 

During my acquaintance with him in the City of 
Diurnal Night I had never known his views on life, 
romance, literature, and ethics. We had browsed, dur- 
ing our meetings, on local topics, and then parted, after 
Chateau Margaux, Irish stew, flannel-cakes, cottage- 
pudding, and coffee (hey, there! — with milk separate). 
Now I was to get more of his ideas. By way of facts, 
he told me that business had picked up since the party 
conventions, and that he was going to get off at Coke- 
town. 

II 

‘^Say,” said Pescud, stirring his discarded book with 
the toe of his right shoe ; ^^did you ever read one of these 
best-sellers? I mean the kind where the hero is an 
American swell — sometimes even from Chicago — who 
falls in love with a royal princess from Europe who is 
travelling under an alias, and follows her to her father’s 
kingdom or principality? I guess you have. They’re 
all alike. Sometimes this going-away masher is a Wash- 
ington newspaper correspondent, and sometimes he is a 
Van Something from New York, or a Chicago wheat- 
broker worth fifty millions. But he’s always ready to 
break into the king row of any foreign country that 
sends over their queens and princesses to try the new 
plush seats on the Big Four or the B. and O. There 


Best’Seller 213 

doesn’t seem to be any other reason in the book for their 
being here. 

‘‘Well, this fellow chases the royal chair-warmer home 
as I said, and finds out who she is. He meets her on the 
corso or the strasse one evening and gives us ten pages 
of conversation. She reminds him of the difference in 
their stations, and that gives him a chance to ring in 
three solid pages about America’s uncrowned sovereigns. 
If you’d take his remarks and set ’em to music, and then 
take the music away from ’em, they’d sound exactly like 
one of George Cohan’s songs. 

“Well, you know how it runs on, if you’ve read any 
of ’em — he slaps the king’s Swiss bodyguards around 
like everything whenever they get in his way. He’s a 
great fencer, too. Now, I’ve known of some Chicago 
men who were pretty notorious fences, but I never heard 
of any fencers coming from there. He stands on the 
first landing of the royal staircase in Castle Schutzem 
festenstein with a gleaming rapier in his hand, and makes 
a Baltimore broil of six platoons of traitors who come 
to massacre the said king. And then he has to fight 
duels with a couple of chancellors, and foil a plot by four 
Austrian archdukes to seize the kingdom for a gasoline- 
station. 

“But the great scene is when his rival for the princess’ 
hand. Count Feodor, attacks him between the portcullis 
and the ruined chapel, armed with a mitrailleuse, a yata- 
ghan, and a couple of Siberian bloodhounds. This 


214 Options 

scene is what runs the best-seller into the twenty-ninth 
edition before the publisher has had time to draw a check 
for the advance royalties. 

“The American hero shucks his coat and throws it 
over the heads of the bloodhounds, gives the mitrailleuse 
a slap with his mitt, says ‘Yah !’ to the yataghan, and 
lands in Kid McCoy’s best style on the count’s left eye. 
Of course, we have a neat little prize-fight right then and 
there. The count — in order to make the go possible — 
seems to be an expert at the art of self-defence, himself ; 
and here we have the Corbett-Sullivan fight done over 
into literature. The book ends with the broker and the 
princess doing a John Cecil Clay cover under the linden- 
trees on the Gorgonzola Walk. That winds up the love- 
story plenty good enough. But I notice that the book 
dodges the final issue. Even a best-seller has sense 
enough to shy at either leaving a Chicago grain-broker 
on the throne of Lobsterpotsdam or bringing over a real 
princess to eat fish and potato salad in an Italian chalet 
on Michigan Avenue. What do you think about ’em?” 

“Why,” said I, “I hardly know, John. There’s a 
saying: ‘Love levels all ranks,’ you know.” 

“Yes,” said Pescud, “but these kind of love-stories are 
rank — on the level. I know something about literature, 
even if I am in plate-glass. These kind of books are 
wrong, and yet I never go into a train but what they^pile 
’em up on me. No good can come out of an international 
clinch between the Old World aristocracy and one of us 
fresh Americans. When people in real life marry, they 


Best-Seller 


215 


generally hunt up somebody in their own station. A 
fellow usually picks out a girl that went to the same high- 
school and belonged to the same singing-society that he 
did. When young millionaires fall in love, they always 
select the chorus-girl that likes the same kind of sauce on 
the lobster that he does. Washington newspaper corre- 
spondents always marry widow ladies ten years older 
than themselves who keep boarding-houses. No, sir, 
you can’t make a novel sound right to me when it makes 
one of C. D. Gibson’s bright young men go abroad and 
turn kingdoms upside down just because he’s a Taft 
American and took a course at a gymnasium. And 
listen how they talk, too 1” 

Pescud picked up the best-seller and hunted his page. 

‘‘Listen at this,” said he. “Trevelyan is chinning 
with the Princess Alwyna at the back end of the tulip- 
garden. This is how it goes: 

not so, dearest and sweetest of earth's fairest flowers. 
Would I aspire? You are a star set high above me in a royal 
heaven^ I am only — myself. Yet I am a man, and I have a heart 
to do and dare. I have no title save that of an uncrowne<l sover- 
eign; but I have an arm and a sword that yet might free Schutzen- 
festenstein from the plots of traitors.’ 

“Think of a Chicago man packing a sword, and talk- 
ing about freeing anything that sounded as much like 
canned pork as that ! He’d be much more likely to fight 
to have an import duty put on it.” 

“I think I understand you, John,” said I. “You 
want fiction-writers to be consistent witli their scenes 
and characters. They shouldn’t mix Turkish pashas 


216 Options 

with Vermont larmers, or English dukes with Long 
Island clam-diggers, or Italian countesses with Montana 
cowboys, or Cincinnati brewery agents with the rajahs 
of India.” 

^‘Or plain business men with aristocracy high above 
’em,” added Pescud. ^^It don’t j ibe. People are divided 
into classes, whether we admit it or not, and it’s every- 
body’s' impulse to stick to their own class. They do it, 
too. I don’t see why people go to work and buy hun- 
dreds of thousands of books like that. You don’t se^ 
or hear of any such didoes and capers in real life.” 

Ill 

‘Well, John,” said I, “I haven’t read a best-seller in 
a long time. Maybe I’ve had notions about them some- 
what like yours. But teU me more about j^ourself. 
Getting along all right with the company?” 

“Bully,” said Pescud, brightening at once. “I’ve had 
my salary raised twice since I saw you, and I get a com- 
mission, too. I’ve bought a neat slice of real estate out 
in the East End, and have run up a house on it. Next 
year the firm is going to sell me some shares of stock. 
Oh, I’m in on the line of General Prosperity, no matter 
who’s elected !” 

“Met your affinity yet, John?” I asked. 

“Oh, I didn’t tell j^ou about that, did I?” said Pescud 
with a broader grin. 

“0-ho !” I said. “So you’ve taken time enough off 
from your plate-glass to have a romance?” 


Best-Seller 217 

^‘No, no,’^ said John. romance — nothing like 

that ! But ni tell you about it. 

“I was on the south-bound, going to Cincinnati, about 
eighteen months ago, when I saw, across the aisle, the 
finest looking girl I’d ever laid eyes on. Nothing spec- 
tacular, you know, but just the sort you want for keeps. 
Well, I never was up to the flirtation business, either 
handkerchief, automobile, postage-stamp, or door-step, 
and she wasn’t the kind to start anything. She read a 
book and minded her business, which was to make the 
world prettier and better just by residing in it. I kept 
on looking out of the side doors of my eyes, and finally 
the proposition got out of the Pullman clas^ into a case 
of a cottage with a lawn and vines running over the 
porch. I never thought of speaking to her, but I let the 
plate-glass business go to smash for a while. 

‘^She changed cars at Cincinnati, and took a sleeper to 
Louisville over the L. and N. There she bought another 
ticket, and went on through Shelby ville, Frankford and 
Lexington. Along there I began to have a hard time 
keeping up with her. The trains came along when they 
pleased, and didn’t seem to be going anywhere in particu- 
lar, except to keep on the track and the right of way as 
much as possible. Then they began to stop at junctions 
instead of towns, and at last they stopped altogether. 
I’ll bet Pinkerton would outbid the plate-glass people for 
my services any time if they knew how I managed to 
shadow that young lady. I contrived to keep out of her 
sight as much as I could, but I never lost track of her. 


218 Options 

‘‘The last station she got off at was away down in 
Virginia, about six in the afternoon. There were about 
fifty houses and four hundred niggers in sight. The rest 
was red mud, mules, and speckled hounds. 

“A tall old man, with a smooth face and white hair, 
looking as proud as Julius Caesar and Roscoe Conkling on 
the same post-card, w^as there to meet her. His clothes 
were frazzled, but I didn’t notice that till later. He took 
her little satchel, and they started over the plank walks 
and went up a road along the hill. I kept along a piece 
behind ’em, trying to look like I was hunting a garnet 
ring in the sand that my sister had lost at a picnic the 
previous Saturday. 

“They went in a gate on top of the hill. It nearly took 
my breath aw^ay when I looked up. Up there in the 
biggest grove I ever saw' was a tremendous house with 
round wdiite pillars about a thousand feet high, and the 
yard was so full of rose-bushes and box-bushes and lilacs 
that you couldn’t have seen the house if it hadn’t been as 
big as the Capitol at Washington, 

“ ‘Here’s w here I have to trail,’ says I to myself. I 
thought before that she seemed to bo in moderate circum- 
stances, at least. This must be the Governor’s mansion, 
or the Agricultural Building of a new World’s Fair, any- 
how. I’d better go back to the village and get posted by 
the postmaster, or drug the druggist for some informa- 
tion. 

“In the village I found a pine hotel called the Bay View 
House. The only excuse for the name was a bay horse 


Best-Seller 


219 


grazing in the front yard. I set my sample-case down, 
and tried to be ostejisible. I told the laiidlord I was 
taking orders for plate-glass. 

‘“1 don’t want no plates,’ says he, ‘but I do need 
anotlier glass molasses-pitcher.’ 

“By-aiid-by I got him down to local gossip and an- 
swering questions. 

“‘Why,’ says he, ‘I thought everybody knowed who 
lived in the big white house on the hill. It’s Colonel 
Allyn, the biggest man and the finest quality in Virginia, 
or anj^ where else. They’re the oldest family in the State. 
That was his daughter that got off the train. She’s 
been up to Illinois to see lier aunt, who is sick.’ 

“I registered at the hotel, and on the third day I 
caught the young lady walking in the front yard, down 
next to the paling fence. I stopped and raised my hat 
— the/e wasn’t an>^ other way. 

“‘E-t^cuse me,’ says I, ‘can you tell me where Mr. 
Hinkle lives 

“She looks at me as cool as if I was the man come to see 
about the weeding of the garden, but I thought I saw just 
a slight twinkle of fun in her ey^es. 

“‘No one of that name lives in Birchton,’ sa^’s she. 
‘That is,’ she goes on, ‘as far as I know. Is the gentle- 
man you are seeking white?’ 

“Well, that tickled me. ‘No kidding,’ says I. ‘I’m 
not looking for smoke, even if I do come from Pitts- 
burgh.’ 

“‘You are quite a distance from home,’ says slie. 


220 Options 

‘IM have gone a thousand miles farther,’ says I. 

“‘Not if you hadn’t waked up when the train 
started in Shelbj^ville,’ says she; and then she turned 
almost as red as one of the roses on the bushes in 
the yard. I remembered I had dropped off to sleep 
on a bench in the Shelbyville station, waiting to see 
which train she took and only just managed to wake up 
in time. 

“And then I told her why I had come, as respectful 
and earnest as I could. And I told her everything about 
myself, and what I was making, and how that all I asked 
was just to get acquainted with her and try to get her 
to like me. 

“She smiles a little, and blushes some, but her eyes 
never get mixed up. They look straight at whatever 
she’s talking to. 

“ ‘I never had any one talk like this to me before, Mr. 
Pescud,’ says she. ‘What did you say your name is 
— John?’ 

“ ‘John A.,’ says 1. 

“ ‘And you came mighty near missing the train at 
Powhatan Junction, too,’ says she, with a laugh that 
sounded as good as a mileage-book to me. 

“ ‘How did you know?’ I asked. 

“ ‘Men are very clumsy,’ said she. ‘I knew you were 
on every train. I thought you were going to speak to 
me, and I’m glad you didn’t.’ 

“Then we had more talk ; and at last a kind of proud. 


Best’S eller 221 

serious look came on her face, and she turned and pointed 
a finger at the big house. 

‘The Allyns,’ says she, ‘have lived in Elmcroft for a 
hundred years. We are a proud family. Look at that 
mansion. It has fifty rooms. See the pillars and porches 
and balconies. The ceilings in the reception-rooms and 
the ballroom are twenty-eight feet high. My father is 
a lineal descendant of belted earls.’ 

“ ‘I belted one of ’em once in the Duquesne Hotel, in 
Pittsburgh,’ says I, ‘and he didn’t offer to resent it. He 
was there dividing his attentions between Monongahela 
whiskey and heiresses, and he got fresh.’ 

“ ‘Of course,’ she goes on, ‘my father wouldn’t allow^ a 
drummer to set his foot in Elmcroft. If he knew that 
I was talking to one over the fence he would lock me in 
my room.’ 

“ ‘Would you let me come there says I. ‘Would you 
talk to me if I was to call.^ For,’ I goes on, ‘if you said 
I might come and see you, the earls might be belted or 
suspendered, or pinned up with safety-pins, as far as 
I am concerned.’ 

“ ‘I must not talk to you,’ she says, ‘because we have 
not been introduced. It is not exactly proper. So I 
will say good-bye, Mr. ’ 

‘“Say the name,’ says I. ‘You haven’t forgotten it.’ 

“ ‘Pescud,’ says she, a little mad. 

“ ‘The rest of the name !’ I demands, cool as could be. 

“‘John,’ says she. 


222 Options 

John — what?’ I says. 

‘^‘John A.,’ says she, with her head high. ‘Are you 
through, now?’ 

“ ‘I’m coming to see the belted earl to-morrow,’ I says. 

“ ‘He’ll feed you to his fox-hounds,’ says she, laughing. 

‘“If he does, it’ll improve their running,’ says I. 
‘I’m something of a hunter myself.’ 

“ ‘I must be going in now,’ says she. ‘I oughtn’t to 
have spoken to you at all. I hope you’ll have a pleasant 
trip back to Minneapolis — or Pittsburgh, was it ? 
Good-bye !’ 

“ ‘Good-night,’ says I, ‘and it wasn’t Minneapolis. 
What’s your name, first, please?’ 

“She hesitated. Then she pulled a leaf off a bush, 
and said: 

“‘My name is Jessie,’ says she. 

“ ‘Gk)od-night, Miss Allyn,’ says I. 

“The next morning at eleven, sharp, I rang the door- 
bell of that World’s Fair main building. After about 
three quarters of an hour an old nigger man about eighty 
showed up and asked what I wanted. I gave him my 
business card, and said I wanted to see the colonel. He 
showed me in. 

“Say, did you ever crack open a wormy English wal- 
nut? That’s what that house was like. There wasn’t 
enough furniture in it to fill an eight-dollar flat. Some 
old horsehair lounges and three-legged chairs and some 
framed ancestors on the walls were all that met the eye. 
But when Colonel Allyn comes in, the place seemed to 


Best-Seller 


223 


light up. You could almost hear a band playing, and 
see a bunch of old-timers in wigs and white stockings 
dancing a quadrille. It was the style of him, although 
he had on the same shabby clothes I saw him wear at the 
station. 

“For about nine seconds he had me rattled, and I came 
mighty near getting cold feet and trying to sell him some 
plate-glass. But I got my nerve back pretty quick. He 
asked me to sit down, and I told him everything. I told 
him how I followed his daughter from Cincinnati, and 
what I did it for, and all about my salary and prospects, 
and explained to him my little code of living — to be 
always decent and right in your home town; and when 
you’re on the road never take more than four glasses of 
beer a day or pla^ higher than a twenty-five cent limit. 
At first I thought he was going to throw me out of the 
window, but I kept on talking. Pretty soon I got a 
chance to tell him that story about the Western Con- 
gressman who had lost his pocketbook and the grass 
widow — you remember that story. Well, that got him 
to laughing, and Pll bet that was the first laugh those 
ancestors and horsehair sofas had heard in many a day. 

“We talked two hours. I told him everything I knew ; 
and then he began to ask questions, and I told him the 
rest. All I asked of him was to give me a chance. If I 
couldn’t make a hit with the little lady, I’d clear out, 
and not bother any more. At last he says : 

“‘There was a Sir Courtenay Pescud in the time of 
Charles I, if I remember rightly.’ 


224 Options 

I 

‘‘‘If there was,’ says I, ‘he can’t claim kin with our 
bunch. We’ve always lived in and around Pittsburgh. 
I’ve got an uncle in the real-estate business, and one in 
trouble somewhere out in Kansas. You can inquire 
about any of the rest of us from anybody in old Smoky 
Town, and get satisfactory replies. Did you ever run 
across that story about the captain of the whaler who 
tried to make a sailor say his prayers?’ says 1. 

“ ‘It occurs to me that I have never been so fortunate,” 
says the colonel. 

“So I told it to him. Laugh 1 I was wishing to my- 
self that he was a customer. What a bill of a glass I’d 
sell him ! And then he says : 

“‘The relating of anecdotes and humorous occur- 
rences has always seemed to me, Mr. Pescud, to be a par- 
ticularly agreeable way of promoting and perpetuating 
amenities between friends. With your permission, I will 
relate to you a fox-hunting story with which I was per- 
sonally connected, and which may furnish you some 
amusement.’ 

“So he tells it. It takes forty minutes by the watch.: 
Did I laugh? Well, say I When I got my face straight 
he calls in old Pete, the superannuated darky, and sends 
him down to the hotel to bring up my valise. It was 
Elmcroft for me while I was in the town. 

“Two evenings later I got a chance to speak a word 
with Miss J essie alone on the porch while the colonel was 
thinking up another story. 

“ ‘It’s going to be a fine evening,’ says I. 


Best-Seller 


225 


^He’s coming,’ says she. ‘He’s going to tell you, this 
time, the story about the old negro and the green water- 
melons. It always comes after the one about the Yan- 
kees and the game rooster. There was another time,’ she 
goes on ‘that you nearly got left — it was at Pulaski 
City.’ 

“ ‘Yes,’ says I, ‘I remember. My foot slipped as I was 
jumping Olathe step, and I nearly tumbled off.’ 

‘“I know,’ says she. ‘And — and I — 1 was afraid 
you had, John A, 1 was afraid you had.^ 

“And then she skips into the house through one of the 
big windows.” 

IV 

“Coketown!” droned the porter, making his way 
through the slowing car. 

Pescud gathered his hat and baggage with the leisurely 
promptness of an old traveller. 

“I married her a year ago,” said John. “I told you I 
built a house in the East End. The belted — I mean the 
colonel — is there, too. I find liira waiting at the gate 
whenever I get back from a trip to hear any new story 
I might have picked up on the road.” 

I glanced out of the window. Coketown was nothing 
more than a ragged hillside dotted with a score of black 
dismal huts propped up against dreary mounds of slag 
and clinkers. It rained in slanting torrents^ too, and the 
rills foamed and splashed down through the black mud to 
Jthe railroad-tracks. 


226 Options ] 

^^You won’t sell much plate-glass here, John,” said I. 
<^Why do you get off at this end-o’-the-world?” 

^‘Why,” said Pescud, ‘Hhe other day I took Jessie for 
a little trip to Philadelphia, and coming back she thought 
she saw some petunias in a pot in one of those windows 
over there just like some she used to raise down in the old 
Virginia home. So I thought I’d drop off here for the 
night, and see if I could dig up some of the cuttings or 
blossoms for her. Here we are. Good-night, old man. 
I gave you the address. Come out and see us when you 
have time,” 

The train moved forward. One of the dotted brown 
ladies insisted on having windows raised, now that the 
rain beat against them. The porter came along with 
his mysterious wand and began to light the car. 

I glanced downward and saw the best-seller, I picked 
it up and set it carefully farther along on the floor of the 
car, where the raindrops would not fall upon it. And 
then, suddenly, I smiled, and seemed to see that life has 
no geographical metes and bounds. 

^‘Good-luck to you, Trevelyan,” I said. ‘‘And may 
you get the petunias for your princess !” 


RUS IN URBE 


Considering men in relation to money, there are 
three kinds whom I dislike: men who have more money 
than they can spend; men who have more money than 
they do spend ; and men who spend more money than 
thej^ have. Of the three varieties, I believe I have the 
least liking for the first. But, as a man, I liked Spencer 
Grenville North pretty well, although he had something 
like two or ten or thirty millions — I’ve forgotten ex- 
actly how many. 

I did not leave town that summer. I usually went 
down to a village on the south shore of Long Island. The 
place was surrounded by duck-farms, and the ducks and 
dogs and whip-poor-wills and rusty windmills made so 
much noise that I could sleep as peacefullj^ as if I were in 
my own flat six doors from the elevated railroad in New 
York. But that summer I did not go. Remember that. 
One of my friends asked me why I did not. I replied: 
‘‘Because, old man. New York is the finest summer resort 
in the world.” You have heard that phrase before. 
But that is w^hat I told him. 

I w^as press-agent that j^ear for Binkley & Bing, the 
theatrical managers and producers. Of coul'se 3^ou know 
what a press-agent is. Well, he is not. That is the se- 


228 Options 

Binkley was touring France in his new C. & N. Wil- 
liamson car, and Bing had gone to Scotland to learn 
curling, which he seemed to associate in his mind with hot 
tongs rather than with ice. Before they left they gave 
me June and July, on salary, for my vacation, which act 
was in accord with their large spirit of liberalit3% But 
I remained in New York, which I had decided was the 
finest summer resort in 

But I said that before. 

On July the 10th, North came to town from his camp 
in the Adirondacks. Try to imagine a camp with sixteen 
rooms, plumbing, eiderdown quilts, a butler, a garage, 
solid silver plate, and a long-distance telephone. Of 
course it was in the woods — if Mr. Pinchot wants to pre- 
serve the forests let him give every citizen two or ten or 
thirty million dollars, and the trees will all gather around 
the summer camps, as the Birnam woods came to Dun- 
sinanc, and be preserved. 

North came to see me in my three rooms and bath, 
extra charge for light when used extravagantly or all 
night. He slapped me on the back (I would rather have 
my shins kicked any day), and greeted me with outdoor 
obstreperousness and revolting good spirits. He was 
insolently brown and healthy-looking, and offensively 
well dressed. 

‘^Just ran down for a few days,” said he, ^Ho sign some 
papers and stuff like that. My lawyer wired me to come. 
Well, you indolent cockney, what are you doing in town? 
I took a chance and telephoned, and they said you were 


JRus in XJrhe 


229 


\ 


here. What’s the matter with that Utopia on Long 
Islandl where you used to take your typewriter and your 
villainous temper every summer? Anything wrong with 
the — er — swans, weren’t they, that used to sing on the 
farms at night?” 

^‘Ducks,” said L ‘^The songs of swans are for luckier 
ears. They swim and curve their necks in artificial lakes 
on the estates of the wealthy to delight the eyes of the 
favorites of Fortune.” 

‘‘Also in Central Park,” said North, “to delight the 
eyes of immigrants and bummers. I’ve seen ’em there 
lots of times. But why are you in the city so late in the 
summer ?” 

“New York City,” I began to recite, “is the finest 
sum — — ” 

“No, you don’t,” said North, emphatically. “You 
don’t spring that old one on me. I know you know 
better. Man, you ought to have gone up with us this 
summer. The Prestons are there, and Tom Volney and 
the Monroes and Lulu Stanford and the Miss Kennedy 
and her aunt that you liked so well.” 

“I never liked Miss Kennedy’s aunt,” I said. 

“I didn’t say you did,” said North. “We are having 
the greatest time we’ve ever had. The pickerel and trout 
are so ravenous that I believe they would swallow your 
hook with a Montana copper-mine prospectus fastened 
on it. And we’ve a couple of electric launches ; and I’ll 
tell you what we do every night or two — we tow a row- 
boat behind each one with a big phonograph and a boy to 


230 Options 

change the discs in ’em. On the water, and twenty yards 
behind you, they are not so bad. And there are passably 
good roads through the woods where we go motoring. I 
shipped two cars up there. And the Pinecliff Inn is 
only three miles away. You know the Pinecliff. Some 
good people are there this season, and we run over to the 
dances twice a week. Can’t you go back with me for a 
week, old man.?” 

I laughed. ^^Northy,” said I — ‘^if I may be so fa- 
miliar with a millionaire, because I hate both the names 
Spencer and Grenville — your invitation is meant kindly, 
but — the city in the summer-time for me. Here, while 
the bourgeoisie is away, I can live as Nero lived — bar- 
ring, thank Heaven, the fiddling — while the city bums 
at ninety in the shade. The tropics and the zones wait 
upon me like handmaidens. I sit under Florida palms 
and eat pomegranates while Boreas himself, electrically 
conjured up, blows upon me his Arctic breath. As for 
trout, you know, yourself, that Jean, at Maurice’s, cooks 
them better than any one else in the world.” 

^‘Be advised,” said North. ‘‘My chef has pinched 
the blue ribbon from the lot. He lays some slices of 
bacon inside the trout, wraps it all in corn-husks — the 
husks of green corn, you know — buries them in hot 
ashes and covers them with live coals. We build fires 
on the bank of the lake and have fish suppers.” 

“I know,” said I. “And the servants bring down 
tables and chairs and damask cloths, and you cat with 
silver forks. I know the kind of camps that you million- 


Rus in JJrhe 


231 


aires have. And there are champagne pails set about, 
disgracing the wild flowers, and, no doubt, Madame 
Tetrazzini to sing in the boat pavilion after the trout.” 

‘‘Oh, no,” said North, concernedly, “we were never as 
bad as that. We did have a variety troupe up from the 
city three or four nights, but they weren’t stars by as 
far as light can travel in the same length of time. I 
always like a few home comforts even when I’m roughing 
it. But don’t tell me you prefer to stay in the city dur- 
ing summer. I don’t believe it. If you do, why did you 
spend your summers there for the last four years, even 
sneaking away from town on a night train, and refusing 
to tell your friends where this Arcadian village was ?” 

“Because,” said I, “they might have followed me and 
discovered it. But since then I have learned that 
Ainaryllis has come to town. The coolest things, the 
freshest, the brightest, the choicest, are to be found in the 
city. If you’ve nothing on hand this evening I will 
show you.” 

“I’m free,” said North, “and I have my light car out- 
side. I suppose, since you’ve been converted to the 
town, that your idea of rural sport is to have a little 
whirl between bicycle cops in Central Park and then 
a mug of sticky ale in some stuffy rathskeller under 
a fan that can’t stir up as many revolutions in a week as 
Nicaragua can in a day.” 

“We’ll begin with the spin through the Park, anyhow,” 
I said. I was choking with the hot, stale air of my little 
apartment, and I wanted that breath of the cool to brace 


232 Options 

me for the task of proving to my friend that New York 
was the greatest — and so forth. 

‘Where can you find air any fresher or purer than 
this?” I asked, as we sped into Central’s boskiest dell. 

“Air!” said North, contemptuously. “Do you call 
this air? — this muggy vapor, smelling of garbage and 
gasoline smoke. Man, I wish you could get one sniflF of 
the real Adirondack article in the pine woods at day- 
light.” 

“I have heard of it,” said I. “But for fragrance and 
tang and a joy in the nostrils I would not give one puff 
of sea breeze across the bay, down on my little boat 
dock on Long Island, for ten of your turpentine-scented 
tornadoes.” 

“Then why,” asked North, a little curiously, “don’t 
you go there instead of staying cooped up in this Greater 
Bakery?” 

“Because,” said I, doggedly, “I have discovered that 
New York is the greatest summer ” 

“Don’t say that again,” interrupted North, “unless 
you’ve actually got a job as General Passenger Agent of 
the Subway. You can’t really believe it.” 

I went to some trouble to try to prove my theory to 
my friend. The Weather Bureau and the season had 
Conspired to make the argument worthy of an able advo- 
cate. 

The city seemed stretched on a broiler directly above 
the furnaces of Avernus. There was a kind of tepid 
gayety afoot and awheel in the boulevards, mainly 


Rus in Urhe 


233 


evinced by languid men strolling about in straw hats and 
evening clothes, and rows of idle taxicabs with their flags 
up, looking like a blockaded Fourth of July procession. 
The hotels kept up a specious brilliancy and hospitable 
outlook, but inside one saw vast empty caverns, and the 
footrails at the bars gleamed brightly from long dis- 
acquaintance with the sole-leather of customers. In the 
cross-town streets the steps of the old brownstone houses 
were swarming with ‘‘stoopers,” that motley race hailing 
from skylight room and basement, bringing out their 
straw door-step mats to sit and fill the air with strange 
noises and opinions. 

North and I dined on the top of a hotel ; and here, for 
a few minutes, I thought I had made a score. An east 
wind, almost cool, blew across the roofless roof. A capa- 
ble orchestra concealed in a bower of wistaria played 
with sufficient judgment to make the art of music prob- 
able and the art of conversation possible. 

Some ladies in reproachless summer gowns at other 
tables gave animation and color to the scene. And an 
excellent dinner, mainlj^ from the refrigerator, seemed to 
successfully back my judgment as to summer resorts. 
But North grumbled all during the meal, and cursed his 
lawyers and prated so of his confounded camp in the 
woods that I began to wish he would go back there and 
leave me in my peaceful city retreat. 

After dining we went to a roof-garden vaudeville that 
was being much praised. There we found a good bill, 
an artificially cooled atmosphere, cold drinks, prompt 


2S4 Options 

service, and a gay, well-dressed audience. North was 
bored. 

this isn’t comfortable enough for you on the hot- 
test August night for five years,” I said, a little sar- 
castically, ‘^you might think about the kids down in De- 
lancey and Hester streets lying out on the fire-escapes 
with their tongues hanging out, trying to get a breath of 
air that hasn’t been fried on both sides. The contrast 
Hiight increase your enjoyment.” 

^^Don’t talk Socialism,” said North. ‘T gave five 
hundred dollars to the free ice fund on the first of May. 
I’m contrasting these stale, artificial, hollow, wearisome 
^amusements’ with the enjoyment a man can get in the 
woods. You should see the firs and pines do skirt- 
dances during a storm ; and lie down flat and drink out of 
a mountain branch at the end of a day’s tramp after the 
deer. That’s the only w^ay to spend a summer. Get out 
and live with Nature.” 

‘T agree with you absolutely,” said I, with emphasis. 

For one moment I had relaxed nn^ vigilance, and had 
spoken my true sentiments. North looked at me long 
and curiously. 

‘‘Then why, in the name of Pan and Apollo,” he asked, 
“have you been singing this deceitful psean to summer 
in town?” 

I suppose I looked my guilt. 

‘^la,” said North, “I see. May I ask her name?” 

“Annie Ashton,” said I, simply. “She played Nan- 


Rus in Ui^be 235 

nette in Binkley & Bing’s production of ‘The Silver 
Cord.’ She is to have a better part next season.” 

“Take me to see her,” said North. 

Miss Ashton lived with her mother in a small hotel. 
They were out of the West, and had a little monej- that 
bridged the seasons. As press-agent of Binkley & Bing 
I had tried to keep her before the public. As Robert 
James Vandiver, I had hoped to withdraw her ; for if ever 
one was made to keep company with said Vandiver and 
smell the salt breeze on the south shore of Long Island 
and listen to the ducks quack in the watches of the night, 
it was the Ashton set forth above. 

But she had a soul above ducks — above nightingales ; 
aye, even above the birds of paradise. She was very 
beautiful, with quiet ways, and seemed genuine. She 
had both taste and talent for the stage, and she liked to 
stay at home and read and make caps for her mother. 
She was unvaryingly kind and friendly with Binkley & 
Bing’s press-agent. Since the theatre had closed she 
had allowed Mr. Vandiver to call in an unofficial role. I 
had often spoken to her of ray friend, Spencer Grenville 
North ; and so, as it was earlj^ the first turn of the vaude- 
ville being not yet over, we left to find a telephone. 

Miss Ashton would be very glad to see Mr. Vandiver 
and Mr. North. 

We found her fitting a new cap on her mother. I 
never saw her look more charming. 

North made himself disagreeably entertaining. He 


236 Options 

was a good talker, and had a way with him. Besides, he 
had two, ten, or thirty millions, I’ve forgotten which. I 
incautiously admired the mother’s cap, whereupon she 
brought out her store of a dozen or two, and I took a 
course in edgings and frills. Even though Annie’s fingers 
gers had pinked, or ruched, or hemmed, or whatever you 
do to ’em, they palled upon me. And I could hear 
North drivelling to Annie about his odious Adirondack 
camp. 

Two days after that I saw North in his motor-car 
with Miss Ashton and her mother. On the next after- 
noon he dropped in on me. 

“Bobby,” said he, “this old burg isn’t such a bad 
proposition in the summer-time, after all. Since I’ve 
been knocking around it looks better to me. There are 
some first-rate musical comedies and light operas on the 
roofs and in the outdoor gardens. And if you hunt up 
the right places and stick to soft drinks, you can keep 
about as cool here as you can in the country. Hang it ! 
when you come to think of it, there’s nothing much to the 
country, anyhow. You get tired and sunburned and 
lonesome, and you have to eat any old thing that the cook 
dishes up to you.” 

“It makes a difference, doesn’t it.^” said L 

“It certainly does. Now, I found some whitebait 
yesterday, at Maurice’s, with a new sauce that beats 
anything in the trout line I ever tasted.” 

“It makes a difference, doesn’t it?” I said. 


Bus in JJrhe 237 

‘^Immense. The sauce is the main thing with white- 
bait.” 

‘Tt makes a difference, doesn’t it.'^” I asked, looking 
him straight in the eye. He understood. 

‘^Look here. Bob,” he said, ‘T was going to tell you. 
I couldn’t help it. I’ll play fair with you, but I’m going 
in to win. She is the ‘one particular’ for me.” 

“All right,” said I. “It’s a fair field. There are no 
rights for you to encroach upon.” 

On Thursday afternoon Miss Ashton invited North 
and myself to have tea in her apartment. He was de- 
voted, and she was more charming than usual. By 
avoiding the subject of caps I managed to get a word or 
two into and out of the talk. Miss Ashton asked me in 
a make-conversational tone something about the next 
season’s tour. 

“Oh,” said I, “I don’t know about that. I’m not 
going to be with Binkley & Bing next season.” 

“Why, I thought,” said she, “that they were going to 
put the Number One road company under your charge. 
I thought you told me so.” 

“They were,” said I, “but they won’t. I’ll tell you 
what I’m going to do. I’m going to the south shore of 
Long Island and buy a small cottage I know there on the 
edge of the bay. And I’ll buy a catboat and a rowboat 
and a shotgun and a yellow dog. I’ve got money enough 
to do it. And I’ll smell the salt wind all day when it 
blows from the sea and the pine odor when it blows from 


2S8 Options 

the land. And, of course, I’ll write plays until I have a 
trunk full of ’em on hand. 

‘“And the next thing and the biggest thing I’ll do will 
be to buy that duck-farm next door. Few people under- 
stand ducks. I can watch ’em for hours. They can 
march better than any company in the National Guard, 
and they can play ‘follow my leader’ better than the en- 
tire Democratic party. Their voices don’t amount to 
much, but I like to hear ’em. They wake you up a dozen 
times a night, but there’s a homely sound about their 
quacking that is more musical to me than the cry of 
‘Fresh strawber-rees !’ under your window in the morn- 
ing when you want to sleep. 

“And,” I went on, enthusiastically, “do you know the 
value of ducks besides their beauty and intelligence and 
•rder and sweetness of voice Picking their feathers 
gives an unfailing and never-ceasing income. On a farm 
that I know the feathers were sold for $400 in one year. 
Think of that ! And the ones shipped to the market will 
bring in more money than that. Yes, I am for the ducks 
and the salt breeze coming over the bay. I think I shall 
get a Chinaman cook, and with him and the dog and 
the sunsets for company I shall do well. No more of 
this dull, baking, senseless, roaring city for me.” 

Miss Ashton looked surprised. North laughed. 

“I am going to begin one of my plays to-night,” I said, 
“so I must be going.” And with that I took my de- 
parture. 


Bus in Urhe 239 

A few days later Miss Ashton telephoned to me, ask- 
ing me to call at four in the afternoon. I did. 

‘‘You have been xqyj good to me,” she said, hesitat- 
ingly, “and I thought I would tell you. I am going to 
leave the stage.” 

“Yes,” said I, “I suppose you will. They usually do 
when there’s so much money.” 

“There is no money,” she said, “or very little. Our 
money is almost gone.” 

“But I am told,” said I, “that he has something like 
tw^o or ten or thirty millions — I have forgotten which.” 

“I know what you mean,” she said. “1 will not pre- 
Aend that I do not. I am not going to marry Mr. North,” 

“Then why are you leaving the stage I asked, se- 
verely. “What else can you do to earn a living.^” 

She came closer to me, and I can see the look in her 
eyes yet as she spoke. 

“I can pick ducks,” she said. 

We sold the first year’s feathers for $350. 


A POOR RULE 


I HAVE always maintained, and asserted from time 
to time, that woman is no mystery ; that man can fore- 
tell, construe, subdue, comprehend, and interpret her. 
That she is a mystery has been foisted by herself upon 
credulous mankind. Whether I am right or wrong we 
shall see. As “Harper’s Drawer” used to say in bygone 

years : “The following good story is told of Miss , 

Mr. , Mr. , and Mr. 

We shall have to omit “Bishop X” and “the Rev. 

,” for they do not belong. 

In those days Paloma was a new town on the line of 
the Southern Pacific. A reporter would have called it a 
“mushroom” town; but it was not. Paloma was, first 
and last, of the toadstool variety. 

The train stopped there at noon for the engine to drink 
and for the passengers both to drink and to dine. There 
w^as a new yellow-pine hotel, also a wool warehouse, and 
perhaps three dozen box residences. The rest was 
composed of tents, cow ponies, “black -waxy” mud, and 
mesquite-trees, all bound round by a horizon. Paloma 
was an about-to-be city. The houses represented faith ; 
the tents hope ; the twice-a-day train, by which you might 
leave, creditably sustained the role of charity. 

240 


A Poor Rule 


241 


The Parisian Restaurant occupied the muddiest spot 
in the town while it rained, and the warmest when it shone. 
It was operated, owned, and perpetrated by a citizen 
known as Old Man Hinkle, who had come out of Indiana 
to make his fortune in this land of condensed milk and 
sorghum. 

There was a four-room, unpainted, weather-boarded 
box house in which the family lived. From the kitchen 
extended a “shelter” made of poles covered with chapar- 
ral brush. Under this was a table and two benches, each 
twenty feet long, the product of Paloma home carpentry. 
Here was set forth the roast mutton, the stewed apples, 
boiled beans, soda-biscuits, puddinorpie, and hot coffee 
of the Parisian menu. 

Ma Hinkle and a subordinate known to the ears as 
“Betty,” but denied to the eyetsight, presided at the 
range. Pa Hinkle himself, with salamandrous thumbs, 
served the scalding viands. During rush hours a Mexi- 
can youth, who rolled and smoked cigarettes between 
courses, aided him in waiting on the guests. As is cus- 
tomary at Parisian banquets I place the sweets at the 
end of my wordy menu. 

Ileen Hinkle ! 

The spelling is correct, for I have seen her write it. 
No doubt she had been named by ear; but she so splen- 
didly bore the orthography that Tom Moore himself 
(had he seen her) would have endorsed the phonography. 

Ileen was the daughter of the house, and the first Lady 
Cashier to invade the territory south of an east-and-west 


242 Options 

line drawn through Galveston and Del Rio. She sat on 
a high stool in a rough pine grand-stand — or was it a 
temple? — under the shelter at the door of the kitchen. 
There was a barbed-wire protection in front of her, with 
a little arch under which you passed your money. 
Heaven knows why the barbed wire ; for every man who 
dined Parisianly there would have died in her service. 
Her duties were light ; each meal was a dollar ; you put it 
under the arch, and she took it. 

I set out with the intent to describe Ileen Hinkle to 
you. Instead, I must refer you to the volume of Edmund 
Burke entitled : A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin 
of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful. It is an ex** 
haustive treatise, dealing first with the primitive concep- 
tions of beauty — roundness and smoothness, I think 
they are, according to Burke. It is well said. Rotund- 
ity is a patent charm ; as for smoothness — the more new 
wrinkles a woman acquires, the smoother she becomes. 

Ileen was a strictly vegetable compound, guaranteed 
under the Pure Ambrosia and Balm-of-Gilead Act of the 
year of the fall of Adam. She was a fruit-stand blonde 
— strawberries, peaches, cherries, etc. Her eyes were 
wide apart, and she possessed the calm that precedes a 
storm that never comes. But it seems to me that words 
(at any rate per) are wasted in an effort to describe the 
beautiful. Like fancy, ‘‘It is engendered in the eyes.” 
There are three kinds of beauties — I was foreordained 
to be homiletic ; I can never stick to a story. 

The first is the freckle-faced, snub-nosed girl whom 


A Poor Rule 


243 


you like. The second is Maud Adams. The third is, 
or are, the ladies in Bouguereau’s paintings. Ileen Hin- 
kle was the fourth. She was the mayoress of Spotless 
Town. There were a thousand golden apples coming 
to her as Helen of the Troy laundries. 

The Parisian Restaurant was within a radius. Even 
from beyond its circumference men rode in to Paloma to 
win her smiles. They got them. One meal — one 
smile — one dollar. But, with all her impartiality, Ileen 
seemed to favor three of her admirers above the rest. 
According to the rules of politeness, I will mention my- 
self last. 

The first was an artificial product known as Bryan 
Jacks — a name that had obviously met with reverses. 
Jacks was the outcome of paved cities. He was a small 
man made of some material resembling flexible sandstone. 
His hair was the color of a brick Quaker meeting-house ; 
his eyes were twin cranberries ; his mouth was like the 
aperture under a drop-letters-here sign. 

He knew every city from Bangor to San Francisco, 
thence north to Portland, thence S. 45 E. to a given point 
in Florida. He had mastered every art, trade, game, 
business, profession, and sport in the world, had been 
present at, or hurrying on his way to, ever 3 ^ headline 
event that had occurred between oceans since he was 
five years old. You might open the atlas, place your 
finger at random upon the name of a town, and Jacks 
would tell you the front names of three prominent citi- 
zens before you could close it again. He spoke patron- 


244 Options 

izingly and even disrespectfully of Broadway, Beacon 
Hill, Michigan, Euclid, and Fifth avenues, and the St* 
Louis Four Courts. Compared with him as a cosmopo- 
lite, the Wandering Jew would have seemed a mere her- 
mit. He had learned everything the world could teach 
him, and he w ould tell you about it. 

I hate to be reminded of Pollok’s ^^Course of Time,’’ 
and so do you ; but every time I saw Jacks I would think 
of the poet’s description of another poet by the name of 
G. G. Byron who ^‘Drank early; deeply drank — drank 
draughts that common millions might have quenched ; 
then died of thirst because there was no more to 
drink.” 

That fitted Jacks, except that, instead of dying, he 
came to Paloma, which was about the same thing. He 
was a telegrapher and statlon-and-express agent at 
seventy-five dollars a month. Why a young man who 
knew everything and could do everything was content 
to serve in such an obscure capacity I never could under- 
stand, although he let out a hint once that it was as a 
personal favor to the president and stockholders of the 
S. P. By Co. 

One more line of description, and I turn Jacks over 
to you. He wore bright blue clothes, yellow shoes, and 
a bow tie made of the same cloth as his shirt. 

My rival No. 2 was Bud Cunningham, whose services 
had been engaged by a ranch near Paloma to assist in 
compelling refractory cattle to keep within the bounds of 
decorum and order. Bud was the only cowboy off the 


A Poor Rule 


245 


stage that I ever saw who looked like one on it. He wore 
the sombrero, the chaps, and the handkerchief tied at 
the back of his neck. 

Twice a week Bud rode in from the Val Verde Ranch 
to sup at the Parisian Restaurant. He rode a many- 
high-handed Kentucky horse at a tremendously fast lope, 
which animal he would rein up so suddenly under the big 
mesquite at the corner of the brush shelter that his hoofs 
would plough canals yards long in the loam. 

Jacks and I were regular boarders at the restaurant, 
of course. 

The front room of the Hinkle House was as neat a lit- 
tle parlor as there was in the black-waxy country. It 
■was all willow rocking-chairs, and home-knit tidies, and 
albums, and conch shells in a row. And a little upright 
piano in one corner. 

Here Jacks and Bud and I — or sometimes one or two 
of us, according to our good-luck — used to sit of eve- 
nings when the tide of trade was over, and ‘^visit” Miss 
Hinkle. 

Ileen was a girl of ideas. She was destined for higher 
things (if there can be anything higher) than taking in 
dollars all day through a barbed-wdre wicket. She had 
read and listened and thought. Her looks would have 
formed a career for a less ambitious girl ; but, rising su- 
perior to mere beauty, she must establish something in 
the nature of a salon — the only one in Paloma. 

‘‘Don’t you think that Shakespeare was a great 
writer?” she would ask, with such a pretty little knit of 


248 Options 

her arched brows that the late Ignatius Donnelly, him- 
self, had he seen it, could scarcely have saved his Bacon. 

Ileen was of the opinion, also, that Boston is more 
cultured than Chicago; that Rosa Bonheur was one of 
the greatest of women painters ; that Westerners are 
more spontaneous and open-hearted than Easterners; 
that London must be a very foggy city, and that Cali- 
fornia must be quite lovely in the springtime. And of 
many other opinions indicating a keeping up with the 
world’s best thought. 

These, however, were but gleaned from hearsay and 
evidence: Ileen had theories of her own. One, in par- 
ticular, she disseminated to us untiringly. Flattery she 
detested. Frankness and honesty of speech and action, 
she declared, were the chief mental ornaments of man and 
woman. If ever she could like any one, it would be for 
those qualities. 

‘T’m awfully weary,” she said, one evening, when we 
three musketeers of the rnesquite were in the little parlor, 
‘‘of having compliments on my looks paid to me. I know 
I’m not beautiful.” 

(Bud Cunningham told me afterward that it was all 
he could do to keep from calling her a liar when she said 
that.) 

“I’m only a little Middle-Western girl,” went on 
Ileen, “who just wants to be simple and neat, and tries to 
help her father make a humble living.” 

(Old Man Hinkle was shipping a thousand silver dol- 
lars a month, clear profit, to a bank in San Antonio.) 


A Poor Rule 


247 


Bud twisted around in his chair and bent the rim of his 
hat, from which he could never be persuaded to separate. 
He did not know whether she wanted w^hat she said she 
wanted or wliat she knew she deserved. Many a wiser 
man has hesitated at deciding. Bud decided. 

‘^Why — ah, Miss Ileen, beauty, as you might say, 
ain’t everything. Not sayin’ that you haven’t your 
share of good looks, I always admired more than any- 
thing else about you the nice, kind way you treat your ma 
and pa. Any one what’s good to their parents and is a 
kind of home-body don’t specially need to be too pretty.” 

Ileen gave him one of her sweetest smiles. ^‘Thank 
you, Mr. Cunningham,” she said. consider that one 
of the finest compliments I’ve had in a long time. I’d 
so much rather hear you say that than to hear you talk 
about my eyes and hair. I’m glad you believe me when 
I say I don’t like flattery.” 

Our cue was there for us. Bud had made a good guess. 
You couldn’t lose Jacks. He chimed in next. 

‘‘Sure thing, Miss Ileen,” he said ; “the good-lookers 
don’t always win out. Now, you ain’t bad looking, of 
course — but that’s nix-cum-rous. I knew’ a girl once in 
Dubuque with a face like a cocoanut, who could skin the 
cat twice on a horizontal bar without changing hands. 
Now, a girt might have the California peach crop mashed 
to a marmalade and not be able to do that. I’ve seen - — 
er — w’orse lookers than yoUy Miss Ileen ; but wdiat I like 
about you is the business way 3^ou’ve got of doing things. 
Cool and wise — that’s the winning w’ay for a girl. Mr. 


248 Options 

Hinkle told me the other day you’d never taken in a 
lead silver dollar or a plugged one since you’ve been 
on the job. Now, that’s the stuff for a girl — that’s 
what catches me.” 

Jacks got his smile, too. 

‘^Thank you, Mr. Jacks,” said Ileen. you only 

knew how I appreciate any one’s being candid and not a 
flatterer ! I get so tired of people teUing me I’m pretty. 
I think it is the loveliest thing to have friends who teU 
you the truth.” 

Then I thought I saw an expectant look on Ileen’s 
face as she glanced toward me. I had a wild, sudden 
impulse to dare fate, and tell her of all the beautiful 
handiwork of the Great Artificer she was the most ex- 
quisite — that she was a flawless pearl gleaming pure 
and serene in a setting of black mud and emerald prairies 
— that she was — a — a corker; and that as for mine, I 
cared not if she were as cruel as a serpent’s tooth to her 
fond parents, or if she couldn’t tell a plugged dollar 
from a bridle buckle, if I might sing, chant, praise, 
glorify, and worship her peerless and wonderful beauty. 

But I refrained. I feared the fate of a flatterer. I had 
witnessed her delight at the crafty and discreet words of 
Bud and Jacks. No! Miss Hinkle Tvas not one to be 
beguiled by the plated-silver tongue of a flatterer. Sa 
I joined the ranks of the candid and honest. At once I 
became mendacious and didactic. 

‘‘In all ages, Miss Hinkle,” said T, “in spite of the 
poetry and romance of each, intellect in woman has beefc 


A Poor Rule 


249 


admired more than beauty. Even in Cleopatra, herself, 
men found more a charm in her queenly mind than in her 
looks.” 

‘‘Well, I should think so !” said Ileen. “I’ve seen 
pictures of her that weren’t so much. She had an aw- 
fully long nose.” 

“If I may say so,” I went on, “you remind me of 
Cleopatra, Miss Ileen.” 

“Why, my nose isn’t so long !” said she, opening her 
eyes wide and touching that comely feature with a 
dimpled forefinger. 

“Why — er — I mean,” said I — “I mean as to mental 
endowments.” 

“Oh !” said she ; and then I got my smile just as Bud 
and Jacks had got theirs. 

“Thank every one of you,” she said, very, very sweetly, 
^‘for being so frank and honest with me. That’s the 
way I want you to be always. Just tell me plainly and 
truthfully what you think, and we’ll all be the best friends 
in thd world. And now, because you’ve been so good to 
me, and understand so well how I dislike people who do 
nothing but pay me exaggerated compliments. I’ll sing 
and play a little for you.” 

Of course, we expressed our thanks and joy; but we 
would have been better pleased if Ileen had remained in 
her low rocking-chair face to face with us and let us gaze 
upon her. For she was no Adelina Patti — not even on 
the farewellest of the diva’s farewell tours. She had a 
cooing little voice like that of a turtle-dove that could 


250 Options 

almost fill the parlor when the window's and doors were 
closed, and Betty w'as not rattling the lids of the stove in 
the ' ehen. She had a gamut that I estimate at about 
eight inches on the piano ; and her runs and trills sounded 
like the clothes bubbling in your grandmother’s iron 
washpot. Believe that she must have been beautiful 
when I tell you that it sounded like music to us. 

Ileen’s musical taste was catholic. She would sing 
through a pile of sheet music on the left-hand top of the 
piano, laying each slaughtered composition on the right- 
hand top. The next evening she would sing from right 
to left. Her favorites w'ere Mendelssohn, and Moody 
and Sankey. By request she always wound up with 
‘^Sw^eet Violets” and ‘‘When the Leaves Begin to Turn.” 

When we left at ten o’clock the three of us would go 
down to Jacks’ little wooden station and sit on the plat- 
form, swinging our feet and trying to pump one another 
for clew's as to w hich way Miss Ileen’s inclinations seemed 
to lean. That is the way of rivals — they do not avoid 
and glower at one another; they convene and converse 
and construe — striving by the art politic to estimate 
the strength of the enemy. 

One day there came a dark horse to Paloma, a young 
lawyer who at once flaunted his shingle and himself 
spectacularly upon the town. His name w'as C. Vincent 
Vesey. You could see at a glance that he w^as a recent 
graduate of a Southwestern law school. His Prince 
Albert coat, light striped trousers, broad-brimmed soft 
black hat, and narrow' white muslin bow tie proclaimed 


A Poor Rule 


251 


that more loudly than any diploma could. Vesey was 
a compound of Daniel Webster, Lord Chesterfield, Beau 
Brummell, and Little J ack Horner. His coming h ned 
Paloma. The next day after he arrived an addition to 
the town was surveyed and laid off in lots. 

Of course, Vesey, to further his professional fortunes, 
must mingle with the citizenry and outliers of Paloma. 
And, as well as with the soldier men, he was bound to 
seek popularity with the gay dogs of the place. So 
Jacks and Bud Cunningham and I came to be honored 
by his acquaintance. 

The doctrine of predestination would have been dis- 
credited had not Vesey seen Ileen Hinkle and become 
fourth in the tourney. Magnificently, he boarded at the 
yellow-pine hotel instead of at the Parisian Restaurant ; 
but he came to be a formidable visitor in the Hinkle par- 
lor. His competition reduced Bud to an inspired increase 
of profanity, drove Jacks to an outburst of slang so weird 
that it sounded more horrible than the most trenchant of 
Bud’s imprecations, and made me dumb with gloom. 

For Vesey had the rhetoric. Words flowed from him 
like oil from a gusher. Hyperbole, compliment, praise, 
appreciation, honeyed gallantry, golden opinions, eu- 
logy, and unveiled panegyric vied with one another for 
pre-eminence in his speech. We had small hopes that 
Heen could resist his oratory and Prince Albert. 

But a day came that gave us courage. 

About dusk one evening I was sitting on the little 
gallery in front of the Hinkle parlor, waiting for Ileen to 


252 


Options 

come, when I heard voices inside. She had come into the 
room with her father, and Old Man Pllnkle began to talk 
to her. I had observed before that he was a shrewd man, 
and not unphilosophic. 

‘‘Ily,” said he, “I notice there’s three or four young 
fellers that have been callin’ to see you regular for quite 
a w^hile. Is there any one of ’em you like better than 
another?” 

<‘Why, pa,” she answered, like all of ’em very well. 
I think Mr. Cunningham and Mr. Jacks and Mr. Harris 
are very nice young men. They are so frank and honest 
in everything they say to me. I haven’t known Mr.. 
Vesey very long, but I think he’s a very nice young 
man, he’s so frank and honest in everything he says 
to me.” 

^‘Now, that’s w^hat I’m gittin’ at,” says old Hinkle. 
‘^You’ve always been sayin’ you like people what tell the 
truth and don’t go humbuggin’ you with compliments 
and bogus talk. Now, suppose you make a test of these 
fellers, and see which one of ’em will talk the straightest 
to you.” 

‘‘But how’ll I do it, pa ?’^ 

“I’ll tell you how. You know you sing a little bit, 
Ily 5 you took music-lessons nearly two years in Logans- 
port. It wasn’t long, but it was all we could afford then. 
And your teacher said you didn’t have any voice, and it 
was a waste of money to keep on. Now, suppose you 
ask the fellers what they think of your singin’, and see 
what each one of ’em tells you. yhe man that’ll tell you 


A Poor Rule 253 

the truth about it’ll have a mighty lot of nerve, and ’ll 
do to tie to. What do you think of the plan?” 

‘‘All right, pa,” said Ileen. “I think it’s a good idea. 
I’ll try it.” 

Ileen and Mr. Hinkle went out of the room through tlie 
inside door. Unobserved, I hurried down to the station. 
Jacks was at his telegraph table waiting for eight o’clock 
to come. It was Bud’s night in town, and when he rode 
in I repeated the conversation to them both. I was loyal 
to my rivals, as all true admirers of all Ileens should be. 

Simultaneously the three of us were smitten by an up- 
lifting thought. Surely this test would eliminate Vesey 
from the contest. He, with his unctuous flattery, would 
be driven from the lists. Well we remembered Ileen’s 
love of frankness and honesty — how she treasured truth 
and candor above vain compliment and blandishment. 

Linking arms, we did a grotesque dance of joy up and 
down the platform, singing “Muldoon Was a Solid Man” 
at the top of our voices. 

That evening four of the willow rocking-chairs were 
filled besides the lucky one that sustained the trim figure 
of Miss Hinkle. Three of us waited w^ith suppressed 
excitement the application of the test. It was tried on 
Bud first. 

“Mr. Cunningham,” said Ileen, with her dazzling smile, 
after she had sung “When the Leaves Begin to Turn,” 
“what do you really think of my voice? Frankly and 
honestly, now, as you know I want you to always be 
toward me.” 


254 Options 

Bud squirmed in his chair at his chance to show th^ 
sincerity that he knew was required of him. 

^‘Tell you the truth, Miss Ileen,” he said, earnestly, 
‘‘you ain’t got much more voice than a weasel — just 
a little squeak, you know. Of course, we all like to hear 
you sing, for it’s kind of sweet and soothin’ after all, 
and you look most as mighty well sittin’ on the piano- 
stool as you do faced around. But as for real singin’ — 
I reckon you couldn’t call it that.” 

I looked closely at Ileen to see if Bud had overdone his 
frankness, but her pleased smile and sweetly spoken 
thanks assured me that we were on the right track. 

“And what do you think, Mr. Jacks?” she asked 
next. 

“Take it from me,” said Jacks, “you ain’t in the prima 
donna class. I’ve heard ’em warble in every city in the 
United States ; and I tell you your vocal output don’t go. 
Otherwise, you’ve got the grand opera bunch sent to the 
soap factory — in looks, I mean; for the high screechers 
generally look like Mary Ann on her Thursday out. But 
nix for the gargle work. Your epiglottis ain’t a real 
side-stepper — it"s footwork ain’t good.” 

With a merry ’augh at Jack’s criticism, Ileen looked 
inquiringly at me. 

I admit that I faltered a little. Was there not such a 
thing as being too frank? Perhaps I even hedged a little 
in my verdict ; but I stayed with the critics. 

“I am not skilled in scientific music. Miss Ileen,” I said, 
“but frankly I cannot praise very highly the singing- 


A Poor Rule 


255 


voice that Nature has given you. It has long been a fa- 
vorite comparison that a great singer sings like a bird. 
Well, there are birds and birds. I would say that your 
voice reminds me of the thrush’s — throaty and not 
strong, nor of much compass or variety — but still — er 
^ — sweet — in — er — its — way, and — er ” 

‘‘Thank you, Mr. Harris,” interrupted Miss Hinkle. 
“I knew I could depend upon your frankness and hon- 
esty.” 

And then C. Vincent Vesey drew back one sleeve from 
his snowy cufF, and the water came down at Lodore. 

My memory cannot do justice to his masterly tribute 
to that priceless, God-given treasure — Miss Hinkle’s 
voice. He raved over it in terms that, if they had been 
addressed to the morning stars when they sang together, 
would have made that stellar choir explode in a meteoric 
shower of flaming self-satisfaction. 

He marshalled on his white finger-tips the grand opera 
stars of all the continents, from Jenny Lind to Emma 
Abbott, only to depreciate their endowments. He spoke 
of larynxes, of chest notes, of phrasing, arpeggios, and 
other strange paraphernalia of the throaty art. He 
admitted, as though driven to a cornen^that Jenny Lind 
had a note or two in the high register that Miss Hinkle 
had not yet acquired — but — “!!!” — that was a mere 
matter of practice and training. 

And, as a peroration, he predicted — solemnly pre- 
dicted — a career in vocal art for the “coming star of the 
Southwest — and one of which grand old Texas may well 


256 Options 

be proud,” hitherto unsurpassed in the annals of musical 
history. 

When we left at ten, Ileen gave each of us her usual 
warm, cordial handshake, entrancing smile, and invita- 
tion to call again. I could not see that one was favored 
above or below another — but three of us knew — we 
knew. 

We knew that frankness and honesty had won, and 
that the rivals now numbered three instead of four. 

Down at the station Jacks brought out a pint bottle of 
the proper stuff, and we celebrated the downfall of Or 
blatant interloper. 

Four days went by without anything happening 
W'orthy of recount. 

On the fifth. Jacks and I, entering the brush arbor for 
our supper, saw the Mexican j^outh, instead of a divinity 
in a spotless waist and a navy-blue skirt, taking in the 
dollars through the barbed-wire wicket. 

We rushed into the kitchen, meeting Pa Hinkle coming 
out with two cups of hot coffee In his hands. 

^Where’s Ileen ?” we asked, in recitative. 

Pa Hinkle was a kindly man. ‘‘Well, gents,” said he, 
“it was a sudden notion she took ; but I’ve got the money, 
and I let her have her way. She’s gone to a corn — a 
conservatory in Boston for four years for to have her 
voice cultivated. Now, excuse me to pass, gents, for this 
coflPee’s hot, and my thumbs is tender.” 

That night there were four instead of three of us sit- 
ting on the station platform and swinging our feet. C. 


257 


A Poor Buie 

Vincent Vesej was one of us. We discussed things while 
dogs barked at the moon that rose, as big as a five-cent 
piece or a flour barrel, over the chaparral. 

And what we discussed was whether it is better to He 
to a woman or to tell her the truth. 

And as all of us were joung then, we did not come to a 
decision. 


{THE EN13 



^THB COTJNTBY LIFE PRESS 
GARDEN CITY, N. Y. ^ 








* “ ' . \”^ “'• ^ 0 ^"^ 0 - . V ' 

v^ i-\e>yr?p^ "' ^ 0^ " 


s ■ \ O y „ . '^ 





